Presumed Guilty
by G.Dunbar
Summary: One week from Hell
1. Default Chapter Title

PRESUMED GUILTY PART ONE and TWO: What begins to the tune of a dark comedy ends on a potently serious note when the culmination to a nightmarish week finds O'Brien on trial for the attempted murder of the Bajoran representative to the Federation-Bajoran-Cardassian conference Doctor Janice Lange. A young Human Neutral unknown to be the wife of Dukat's eldest son Anon, Cardassian representative to the caucus.

Author's Note:

Employing Gene Roddenberry's creation Star Trek together with the characters and setting of Star Trek: DS9 and the occasional character/lifeform/species from the original series and Star Trek The Next Generation, The Time of Hagalaz is an umbrella title for a series of alternative Star Trek novels. Not meaning the story takes place in an alternative universe, though the reader is certainly welcome to view the story in this manner, but rather simply exploring the infinite realm of possibilities and variables in the universe.

Presumed Guilty is the first novel told in two parts. Its story, prophecy, and characters, Gul Anon and Sentinel Pfrann Dukat, Doctor Janice Lange, Anar (aka Shakaar Adon, the elder), Shakaar 'Hawk', Chief Engineer Tan, Sian, Mister Paq, Doctors Tracy and Veronica Sorge, Michelle Faraday, Nadya, Elise, Hatrem Ranit, Dak'jar, Assura, and assorted supernumeraries are the author's own creation.

As far as Stardate/placement/time The Time of Hagalaz is roughly set in the aftermath of Ziyal's death at the hands of Damar. A point where Dukat is not free to wreak further havoc, but instead detained by the Federation, undergoing intensive psychiatric treatment in an effort to bring him to trial for war crimes. The Dominion has retreated to watch, Damar assuming precarious control of the Cardassian Government in conjunction with its Civilian Council. 

The following is the novel's prologue, utilized in this instance also as a brief synopsis of the tale's (as a whole) basic premise. G. Dunbar [gad@lynchburg.net][1]

PRESUMED GUILTY 

THE TIME OF HAGALAZ

The Anatomy of a Bajoran Prophecy as told by its butchers, its makers,

adversaries, Guardians and friends

"In the time beyond the Time of Hagalaz…" From the extradimensional realm of his Continuum, Q's voice rang out across the four quadrants of the galaxy for anyone who wanted to listen, and listen well they should to what could be the tale of their own doom. "On a star date yet to be determined, but one which will come to pass…"

The Continuum took upon itself the aura of brilliant light. A kaleidoscope of every known color engulfed the Heavens that were, would be, and had once been. As quickly as the supernova exploded, it dimmed to a far less blinding array of light where from its center a simple mobile of four gray globes emerged. Unequal in mass and awkward in position, the four globes were proportionate in size to that of the Federation, Cardassian, Klingon and Romulan Empires, whom the mobile represented in all their lifeless glory.

As were the many colors of light merely a reflection off the dazzling robes of the aforementioned divine and superior entity known to the worlds of worlds, men, beasts, voles and targs alike, as his Excellency, the royal, the regal, the Q.

Q grinned. A handsome figure in humanoid form, as in any other, he didn't mind concurring with the thunderous round of applause greeting his entrance. Their cheers. Their tears. Their promised threats of suicide. The mobile carried by his omnipotent and powerful hand.

"Whoops!" Q could have dropped the mobile and that would have been the end of that, but he did not. Benevolent, kind, he simply set the mobile to gently swaying in tune with the somber tolling of bells, continuing his horror story of death, destruction and mayhem. Blood, guts and gore, for the benefit of those who were interested, and in particular for the benefit of those who were not, walking the mobile over to Humpty-Dumpty sitting on his low, stone wall. "The Klingon-Cardassian situation has once again achieved critical…"

Humpty eyed Q with mild apprehension. Q smiled to alleviate any fear, merely borrowing a spot beside Humpty to set the mobile down with a promise for the delicate little egg. "It is a prophetic story of action and adventure in which you play a major role."

This seemed to satisfy Humpty. He granted Q the opportunity and time needed to finish his long-winded piece.

"Escalating into several sectors of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants," Q resumed to reference the future of a conflict to end all conflicts however tired and old that particular cliché. "Involving and alarming many. The Federation in response to a number of interested parties — principally Cardassia, and beyond her, Romulus — has proposed a bipartisan Committee assembly to review the issue and make recommendations…A committee, by any other name, a Task Force," he momentarily digressed to devilishly disclose. "But then beyond Cardassia's interests, and those as always numerous petty complaints, there are the major points of the balance of power within the quadrants should the Klingon Empire prevail. As is," he shrugged, "the political stability of the Klingon Empire unto itself a question…

"As is," he assured, his voice dropping emphatic and low, "the position of those endearing twins Romulus and Remus. Rumor has it Cardassia has been in negotiations with the Romulan Star Empire for assistance. In response, rumblings from the Klingon home world span arrogant disinterest all the way to propositions of a Klingon-Romulan allegiance rather than a Cardassia-Romulan one. Either way Destiny might write the ending, a Cardassian-Romulan alignment would alter the balance of power within the quadrants. Not beyond the worry that if the Klingons are successfully routed from Cardassian Space, will the Romulans then leave? If not, or if so, where will the allegiance…

"Of Cardassia and the Romulans then go? O?" Q haughtily eyed the arguably timely appearance of a divine Organian disgustingly pure in his lavish white light and decrepit humanoid form. "On the Klingon side of the line a Klingon-Romulan Empire would alter the balance of power, insure the final downfall of Cardassia, and where in turn, would their allegiance go from there….I'm getting there," Q argued against the silent pressure of the Organian so insufferably impatient as the rest of his uncompromisingly merciful race. "The Big Four distinctly in danger of becoming the Big Three, faces the ultimate reality of becoming the Big One. A Klingon-Romulan Empire or Klingon-Cardassian one would dwarf the Federation. A point it's told, Cardassia has made repeatedly in her petitions to the Federation for assistance. Underscored by the fact Cardassia has no intentions of fading quietly into oblivion with or without the UFP's help…and then there is, of course," Q waved, elaborating on the obvious for those who still refused to pay attention, "the aside issue of the newest fledgling Peoples Government of Cardassia. Instituted by a coup, it could find itself ousted by a coup. From there the resurgence of a Stratocractic Union overseen by the dreaded Obsidian Order and obnoxious Central Command. Furthermore," he nodded to the Organian nodding along with him, "there exists the ongoing threat of the Dominion. The Borg ever-hovering in the background, et cetera, et cetera. There are a multitude of problems and possibilities in other words and something has to be done about them…" Q's voice faded away as did he and his accompanying aura of light much to Humpty's relief who pulled a pillow out from behind his wall, propped it against the mobile, and promptly went off to sleep.

Q reemerged in a desert, his dazzling robes and blazing crown subdued to a brightly gilded red, the divine Organian nowhere around. He sat at a table, square in shape, its four legs cut unevenly, balancing its weight precariously in the dusty sand. The entire tabletop was a chessboard adorned with oddly shaped figures the unpleasant color of burnt wood and all so strikingly individual in size. Three vacant chairs of unrelated styles from rusted chrome to polished stone, sat waiting in vain for their occupants around the table's empty sides. Q continued talking while playing with the figurines. "And so it is not surprising that the response to the Federation's suggestion was overwhelming. From the farthest and the nearest regions they came. The Federation worlds. The friendly worlds, and even the hostile ones. Delegates, diplomats, their assistants and their aides. Their number into the hundreds, and all gathered together on a remote outpost by the name of Silas 4. A former Federation colony, since the time of the oldest Federation and Cardassian wars on the Cardassian side of the line. And where better to begin their journey from into this deepest part of space? Why, naturellement, Deep Space Nine…

"While, as far as the incident..?" Q picked up a chessman, the blinding aura of colors and light returning on a sweeping wave across the sand. "There were two. One was a matter of coincidence. The other was War." He set the chessman down in checkmate to the King. His props, setting, the last of his words, slowly fading into the light. "The committee's Magistrate was Vulcan. The Romulans were there as observers…

"But, first," Q sighed, halted in his escape by the pressure of a hand pressing down on his wrist; the divine Organian had returned. "Something needs to be done in the not too distant present of future's past otherwise chances are no one will live to die at Silas 4. How droll."

To the contrary, the incorporeal Organian was a being steeped in wisdom so far more advanced than his simple white robes and elderly flesh might suggest. He not only understood the Bajoran prophecy of utter doom and death to a galaxy waiting a mere five generations in the wind, he wanted to _do_ something about it. But then he had stood on the worlds of the Federation and Klingon a century in Time ago in the auspicious age of Federation Captain James T. Kirk, and he would stand on them and others again throughout this millennia and on into the next, if the need arose, until the humanoids learned to stand on their own.

"The seeds of life," the Organian pressed the seeds of change, otherwise known as the seeds of Bajoran grapes, into Q's unwilling and playful fist. "The fruits of the vine are bountiful and plenty. The juice of their harvest still far too bitter to drink. But if you kill the vine of vinegar…"

"I know, I know," Q didn't necessarily mean to yell, "you'll never drink the wine. The quaint symbolism of your prophecy has not escaped me…" He turned from the Organian sitting down to the glowing figure of the Bajoran Kai Opaka divine in her own omnipotent right, and parked at the head of the table across from him; the lingering fourth chair still unoccupied. "But then I, too, am divine. It's not the future of the galaxy I debate, it is the question of the millennia I repeat. Your Prophets called upon me for assistance, I answered, now kindly expound on what you would like…the three of us to do…" The vacant seat to his left cried out for his attention. Q ignored it to toy with a remarkably grotesque chessman carved in the astounding likeness of one of the blackest of black Knights, Cardassia's Gul Dukat, a seriously ugly man. "When you say vinegar…" Q mused. "When you speak of all things dreary, dark, and vile wallowing in debauchery and everything else obscene…"

"She speaks of Chancellor Gowron as well." The Organian had this thing about the Klingons, he really did. 

"They come of their own accord," Opaka tipped her frail and ancient head. The weight of her world as light or as heavy as the crowning cap of the Bajoran Vedeks she wore.

"Do they?" With a flick of his fingers Q sent Dukat shooting into his next life and on into his next as he bounced across the sand finally coming to rest upside down, his feet where his head should be, and his head, of course, the other way around.

"Future's guardians, I take you to mean." Q continued to deny any interest in the identity of their absent fourth guest be it a guest, a partner, or enemy of the universe with an egotistical smile for the all-enlightened Organian. A bleeding heart liberal, Q suspected, as well as a muddleheaded fool. Someone who would have preferred to have been given the opportunity to hold onto Dukat for safekeeping rather than leave him unattended regardless of how upside down he appeared to be with his head stuffed firmly in the sand.

"Yes," the Organian confessed.

"I'm sure there are few other species who would even profess to care," Q smirked to Opaka. "Getting back to those guardians — they better hurry up. Silas 4 is a year, no more than two Federation years in the distance, her destiny waiting, not going away. In another time, universe, galaxy, dimension or place, your cantankerous Prefect Dukat not only has the desire and means to destroy all that is and subsequently all that should have come after, he's no doubt doing so as we speak…

"In this universe, however…" Q rose from his seat in all his immense power and glory, so much more than merely capable of defending a galaxy he occasionally, if not fondly, looked upon as Home from the likes of some far greater adversary than the ego of his putrid Dukat. "This galaxy, dimension, time and place, he's the least of Q's concerns…

"Though we understand," he respectfully tipped his gilded red crown following a disgruntled glance over the Organian trying his hand at stomping his foot down on the hem of Q's gown in a valiant, though vain effort to keep him in line, "Dukat's tireless penchant for wreaking havoc while boring in Q's opinion, is obnoxious in yours."

"Five harvests," Opaka nodded in agreement with her Prophets' prophecy, before the grapes of vinegar became the grapes of wine. "The legacy of Prefect Dukat is not his past, nor his present, nor his future…"

"But the unborn soul of an intra-galactical savior of mixed and unmentionable descent five generations and four centuries in Time…Two Federation years at best until the incident at Silas 4," Q's interjection included a reminder, withdrawing a long and lengthy scroll from the breast of his voluminous robes. "First things first before none of us are here to drink the wine, erstwhile efforts of your Emissary and mon Capitaine Sisko aside. Now, the way I think we should proceed…"

The Organian's hand clamped over his wrist. Q sighed with a second dignified nod of his regal bonnet to Opaka. "Fine. It's your prophecy, we'll try it your way first — though I insist," he stressed, "be it now and forever recorded in the official minutes of this historical tête-à-tête, unmindful of the infinite number of universes and their infinite possibilities, in this realm of existence there is no UF_C._ Merely a unified understanding of how we live here as well, and grumble and complain all they want, the lower lifeforms shall and will clean up their act, or we shall and will clean it up for them."

Silence fell over the small group of two, his words so profound. A day passed and then another in the mortal measurement of things. Here it wasn't very long at all before Q began tapping his toe, the Organian frowning, Opaka faceless with her blank Bajoran stare. "Hello," Q inclined forward. "_C_. Continuums. Get it? There may be a United Federation of _P_, Planets, but there is no UF_C."_

"Agreed," Opaka called forth the soul of the child Tora Ziyal, half-Bajoran daughter of the Cardassian has-been Gul Dukat. A young woman of early twenties, in death as she had been in life, Ziyal was decidedly Cardassian in her physical appearance as well as her choice of dress. Her feminine frame heavy and strong. Her ecto-skeleton softened just slightly by her mixed blood, the only thing even remotely Bajoran about her was the awkward addition of those ridges across the bridge of her nose. Nevertheless she was, and had been loved. By someone, somewhere, in some and other points in time, and she was loved by her Prophets now. The divinity of their eternal eyes able to see beyond the superficial; if they couldn't, they wouldn't be divine.

"The fate of the galaxy shall not be sealed in the graveyard of space between Terok Nor and the Cardassian outpost Silas 4," Opaka spoke candidly to Ziyal of the perilous state of things. "As it shall not be sealed along the borders of our worlds, the halls of Terok Nor, the trials of one or all, nor by the one called O'Brien. The Time of Hagalaz is one of hope and light, not the despair of darkness and death. Under the guidance of your eldest brother the contribution of the Cardassian Union to the galaxy shall be one of silence for twenty years, not war. But as the children of all your siblings and their mates cannot exist without their parents, neither can the soul of your youngest brother flourish and be born if his mother dies before your father or your father dies before her. Seek your father's penance for his many sins and more than you shall fail. Seek the power and strength of his arrogance and the child of his eternal mate shall rise above the stench of his heritage. Though the adversaries of his parents are powerful and many, his fate is not only one of bigotry and hate, but that of a trusted friend and advisor to the Emissary Sisko in his twilight years. Do you understand?" 

"I believe so, yes," Ziyal answered cautiously. A novice in her Bajoran heritage while living, Q understood, she was earnestly attempting to learn her role now that she was dead. "All I have to do is figure out a way to convince my father…unfortunately," she sighed heavily with the weighty knowledge of a daughter, "I don't think preservation of the galaxy qualifies as one of my father's deeper concerns. He's a coward and a scoundrel, he really is. So much more so than even I have cared to think…oh, my," Ziyal's watery Cardassian eyes blinked suddenly and wide. "Why, I believe I might have an idea after all. Yes, I believe I just might."

"Oh, good," Q yawned his approval. "Dare I profess to speak for Captain Sisko no doubt waiting to hear your idea with baited breath, the same as I…" he paused to gape at the unoccupied fourth chair. "The trials of the one called O'Brien? What, in the name of your Prophets' wildest fantasies, does Chief Engineer Miles Edward O'Brien have to do with protecting and preserving the flesh of Dukat, and hence the galaxy, for the next four hundred years? Speak!"

"They come of their own accord," Opaka dipped her head.

"Future's guardians," Ziyal clarified. "As do its adversaries."

PRESUMED GUILTY PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

Stardate: _10…9…8…7…6…_

The remote sector of Bajoran Space on the edge of her outermost colonies exploded with disruptors ripping through the eternal, silent blackness. Their brilliant flashes of might illuminating the immediate area surrounding the two Klingon Birds-of-Prey pitting themselves against the equally determined Cardassian transport a ghastly purplish-white.

"I thought the war was over!" The youthful face of Gul Dukat's sixteen year old son Pfrann, second eldest of the former Emperor of Cardassia's lengthy list of heirs, contorted in rage as he screamed at the elbow of his eldest brother manning the central weapons control station aboard the bridge of their transport where it was hardly quiet.

Pfrann's scream then, their resident Vorta clone Weyoun made a silent and generally disinterested note, was solely meant in an effort to be heard above the head-pounding echo of the Klingon strikes. The bridge in imminent danger of disintegrating around them. The smell of burning plasma nearing intoxicating levels as the scattered fires continued to spread quickly.

"Someone forgot to tell the Klingons." Gul Anon Dukat, the eldest, and commander of the transport, though only of the youthful age of twenty-three himself, was equally disinterested for the moment; both as to why his brother might be screaming, as well as the condition of his bridge. Instead, he stood intently focused on getting his weapons array to respond. The heated air around him intense even for a cold-blooded Cardassian, sweat stained his heavily boned face and corded neck. His watery red eyes steely in their concentrated frown when he glanced up from the console to the dimming forward screen with its distorted view of the enemy craft.

"Bring us around," he instructed his helmsman, his voice quiet in its authority. A personal trait that might be considered to be unusual by some being as he was the eldest son of one of the more flamboyant and emotionally charged personalities of the times.

"Attempting," his helm agreed.

"Don't attempt," Anon corrected, "do it."

Somehow they managed to. By the hand of some divine fate, they managed to maneuver the ponderous frame of their transport back around to face the far more lithe Birds-of-Prey at the same time Anon managed to coerce his weapons array into working. 

The phasers struck a direct and fatal hit, rocketing one of the Klingon battle cruisers and her crew of howling warriors into their spirit world.

"Yes!" Anon's fist struck the console in triumphant satisfaction. The radiance of the fiery debris blinding as it filled the viewer screen moments before the rippling waves of tormented energy abruptly released by the destruction of the Klingon warp core struck, knocking the transport a few thousand meters off the beaten path, and sending Anon and his crew flying.

It was pitch dark until the ship's emergency lighting flickered to half light. The only sounds to be heard, the crackling angry snaps of the electrical fires.

"Damn." Anon remained lying on his back on the floor for another moment deeply breathing in the acidic air before shifting himself into a sitting position. The flesh of his left hand painfully charred and blistered, blood slowly stained the front of his uniform, seeping from around a shard of steel piercing the woven armor of his tunic and the leathery skin of his left breast. He stood up, working to pull the triangle hunk of shrapnel loose.

"Anon!" His brother was at his side, concern in his voice.

"Sire." The clown white face of the clone Weyoun was at his other side, ghoulish anticipation in his.

"No, I'm all right," Anon reassured his brother, ignoring Weyoun. "Get me an injury count."

"And a damage report," Weyoun added to that, not that he had been asked.

"I don't want a damage report," Anon corrected Weyoun's instructions, not quite as polite in his quiet authority. 

"You don't want a report..." Weyoun stopped to duck in an effort to avoid the resulting thin spray of blood as Anon managed to pry the metal loose from his chest in the same manner as one would pop a cork from a bottle.

"No," Anon tossed his bloodied souvenir aside to resume his post at his weapons console. Weyoun stood there looking down on his splattered shirt. "The damage I can see. I want to know how many injured men I have -- and whether or not we have shields," he instructed his helm as he eyed his failing screen and the remaining Bird-of-Prey coming around for a final strike at them, prepared for the kill. "Don't worry about the engines -- "

"Six injured," his brother joined him.

"Keep your fingers crossed it stays only six," Anon nodded. "Shields are down throughout."

"What?" The younger stared at his elder.

"Yes, well, your father, you certainly aren't," Weyoun agreed, not meaning to suggest his former Emperor would be crying in the corner over an injured shoulder, but he certainly would be screaming.

"Sorry to disappoint you." Anon's fist engaged his phasers with some timely advice for his brother. "Prepare for impact." Phasers charged at seventy-five percent struck the Klingon battle cruiser dead on less than a thousand meters off the transport's forward bow.

"Not to say I know your father personally," Weyoun attempted to maintain his balance as the first of a staggering series of shock waves vibrated through the ship's unprotected hull with the force of hurricane winds. "Maybe you should have reconsidered that part about the engines."

"Maybe I should have," Anon acknowledged a second before everything whirled to black.

He regained consciousness fifteen minutes later to find himself miraculously still alive, as was his brother, the rest of his small bridge crew, and unfortunately the tiring Weyoun. Below decks the injured count had risen to eight, two of them critically.

"Forward engines are responding at impulse," Pfrann reported in relief.

"Good. Now you give me some good news, Tan," Anon hammered away at his console in search of his Chief Engineer, his breathing slightly labored.

"Oxygen's only at fifty percent," his brother nodded.

"Such as my life support systems, Tan. They're working, right?" Anon swiped annoyed at Weyoun's hand passing a field unit over his head for some reason. 

"You're speaking with a rather annoying guttural accent," Weyoun informed him. "Trust me. I can hear it. You must have damaged your universal translator when you struck your head."

"Learn Cardassian and you won't have to be concerned about it," Anon settled that, the ship lurching as the engines suddenly failed and he moved to assist his brother.

"Orbit is beginning to deteriorate -- "

"That might not be a bad idea," Anon agreed.

"What?" Pfrann stared at him.

The buckled door of the main docking bay of the transport finally popped free, landing with a dull thud on the sandy Bajoran terrain. Anon and his Cardassians emerged to stand shivering in the cool, orange sunlight, breathing in fresh air for the first time in several hours.

"So much for not being able to land one of these things," Weyoun cynically mentioned, dusting himself off. 

"No one says you can't land 'one of these things'," Anon accepted a thin, insulated shirt tossed his way, tossing a second one to his brother. "It's just not recommended."

"I can't imagine why," Weyoun drawled. "Certainly it was one of the smoothest spins through the layers of a planet's atmosphere I have ever experienced -- Go on," he encouraged Anon; the Gul paused in his disrobing to eye the battle-scarred hull of his ship. "If you're cold, you're cold. To me, seventy degrees is seventy degrees. To you, I am aware it is something else entirely.

"Still, I wouldn't worry about it," he continued while Anon pulled off his tunic to pull on his shirt, briefly exposing a set of plated pectorals that would inspire fear in some, nausea in others, and at least a glance or two from the rest of the known species of the galaxy's four quadrants. "Not with a chest like that. No one's liable to say too much. Not out loud.

"Unless, of course, they're Klingon," he shrugged as Anon straightened his dignity along with his rank. "Bajoran. Jem'Hadar..." his cold, thin smile, met Anon's cold, glowering stare. "I know. You don't like me. You can't imagine what it is about my species your father might have begun to find amusing.

"Of course your father didn't find us amusing," he followed along behind Anon moving on to check with his men busy scanning the area for any Maquis cells hidden among Bajoran colonists sure to greet them with open arms. "Anymore than it's my understanding we found him particularly entertaining. He found us necessary. Somewhere along the line that became confused with bringing the Dominion to its knees...Bowing to him, of course," he inclined his head.

"You're right," Anon agreed, "I don't like you. Don't make me repeat it. I also hate repeating myself -- about as much as I hate inane banter," he stressed with a meaningful hint.

"You really aren't your father," Weyoun tittered in his irritating cackle. "Not that that's necessarily a criticism." But then he was privy to the same rumors as everyone else of a thoroughly disagreeable man now gone insane. As if there hadn't been a question regarding his Emperor Dukat's sanity for the past several years.

"And don't," Anon's field unit caught Weyoun on the tip on his nose, "try to flatter me."

"I'll keep it in mind," Weyoun lied. "While reminding you at this most inappropriate time of how the Dominion has officially withdrawn any support of your beloved Cardassia, leaving you to your own well deserved demise."

"I'll cry tomorrow," Anon snorted.

"Yes," Weyoun supposed he would. "In the meantime…" he gave up his worthless attempt to read over the heavy shoulders of Anon's towering giant of a Chief Engineer, Tan. "What do we have, if I may ask? Aside from a weighty piece of salvage and a series of worthless engines?"

"A small village," Tan identified for Anon the whole of their immediate potential for trouble. "Thirty or so of them..."

"About twenty kilometers," Anon nodded. "Energy readings are limited. I believe that, don't you?"

Tan snorted. "About as much as I believe in their Prophets."

"Well..." Weyoun considered, "I don't suppose we can tell by their energy readings if they are farmers or militia?"

"I've never met anyone from the militia who wasn't a farmer, have you?" Anon tossed the field unit back to Tan with a wink for his brother striding up, ready to fight to protect, defend, whatever he needed to do. "Stay with Tan and our cargo. We need it as much as we need each other."

"Nor a farmer who wasn't in the militia," Weyoun agreed with Anon giving a shout for a round of phaser rifles fully charged and the men to go with them. "Yes, we probably could use a few of those, couldn't we? Or at least you could," he smiled at Anon surrendering to looking at him. "But then I believe your father's Advisor Weyoun repeatedly attempted to explain to him that to ostracize the Bajoran people was really not in his best interest."

"That," Anon acknowledged, checking his phaser rifle over before reaching to grab Weyoun up by the scruff of his collar, "is about the only thing I might find questionable about my father's actions."

"What?" Weyoun said as he was lifted up off the tip of his toes.

"What, what?" Anon smiled. "Do you really think I would leave you here? Do you really think I would ever trust you? Do you really think I am not at least my father's son?" he needlessly wondered last. 

"Unfortunately no to all three," Weyoun sighed. 

"Smart man," Anon approved with his increasingly irritating accent that he personally was beginning to like -- until he had to talk to someone he needed to talk to who didn't understand Cardassian any more than Weyoun did.

"No, we come as friends!" Anon and his armed troupe of six descended down on the small farming township with phaser rifles fixed.

"Friends?" Weyoun startled along with the few Bajorans scattered in the village center. "You're pointing phasers rifles at them."

"Shut up." Anon waved his rifle at one particularly dangerous looking eight year old standing with her pregnant mother. "Call your tribe in from the fields -- we want your Elder!"

He paused there, briefly for a moment, to exasperatedly hammer himself in the side of the head with his fist. "Tribe? Did I just say tribe? Yes, I heard myself say tribe."

"Oh, for pity's sake..." Weyoun flashed a welcoming smile for the obviously harmless group of two being joined by a few others. All of them understandably mesmerized by the Cardassian commander punching himself in the head. "I told you, your universal translator isn't working correctly."

"I know it isn't working," Anon sputtered, "I can hear it!"

"So can they," Weyoun assured, highly doubting if a universal translator would be found among the lowly troupe of peasants, and that was fine with him. His was working perfectly. "Advisor Weyoun of the Vorta," he gushed to the puzzled looks slowly releasing Anon to regard him with mild interest. "He's quite right. The Dominion is your friend...And, well..?" he said, as far as Anon standing there talking to himself and punching himself the head? "He's Cardassian. What else can I really say?"

"Not too much, apparently," one of the approaching Bajoran farmers chuckled; a tall man with a weather-worn smile creasing his face. His wife and daughter's stifled laughs agreeing with him as Anon stopped hammering at himself to hammer Weyoun back into line with the butt of his rifle.

The summoned Town Elder went a step further in capturing the Cardassians frowning attention than his amused townspeople as he moved forward, out from the ranks of the farmers to command center stage. A courageous act. Not so much the words the Bajoran spoke, or his provocative, relaxed stance. His face. It was an aging one belonging to Bajor's illustrious First Minister Shakaar Adon being worn by someone else with white hair and blue eyes. "No, please," he implored the annoyed and apparently injured young Gul faced off against them as if he were still in the heat of his battle. "Have mercy on yourself, Commander, not only us -- we can understand you. Yes, completely. Without any difficulty at all."

"You speak Cardassian?" Anon recovered from the unexpected to regard the smiling Elder suspiciously. Wondering if that face of Shakaar's was joke the townspeople were laughing at; he knew it wasn't him. They wouldn't dare. 

"Oh, yes." He was assured by the peasant in his worn and lowly cloak of rough cotton. "As most my age do...Even though you are speaking Bajoran...to me." The Elder's nod moved thoughtfully from the tightened face of the broad and powerful looking Cardassian with his glittering red eyes to that tunic with its darkened purple stain that, to him, suggested a substantial loss of blood. "Klingons? They have been slow in communicating the cease fire to their troops. Something about trouble with their deep space relay stations." 

"Militia..." Anon decided, meaning the Elder and what had to be his true identity. "Ridiculous. We have destroyed the Maquis." 

"Universal translators, at least," the Bajoran smiled again. "I am Anar. Town Elder of our small settlement. If you will permit my granddaughter -- Again for your own benefit," he inclined his head when Anon stiffened in anticipating of stopping anyone from leaving; one harmless child or not. "We have a doctor with us. Janice..."

"We need a doctor," Anon insisted. "I have eight injured men."

"Not with you apparently," Anar agreed since all others appeared to be quite fine.

"No," Anon assured, "with my transport. You must have seen us."

"Probably," Anar shrugged. "Either that or heard. I'm sure someone did. I really wasn't paying attention."

"No, you were out in your fields," Anon silenced him with a wave of his rifle. "You confuse me with someone who cares."

No more than he confused the ragged weeds in the distant background to be grain. Anar maintained his passive posture, daring to contradict the Gul calmly. "No one's out in the fields. They're all at the Temple with Janice...Meeting in prayer," he offered Anon continuing to eye him as if expecting the face of Shakaar Adon to change into someone else's; it wasn't going to.

"Yes, all right," Anon finally gave another wave with his rifle, granting permission. "Send your granddaughter for this -- Janice?" his stare crinkled into a frown.

"Janice Lange," Anar nodded after his little Nadya darting off in compliance. "She's...Well, obviously," he granted, "if she's a she, she's a woman."

"Sounds Human." The Vorta added to that with his dripping smile that Anar personally trusted less than the Cardassian's glower. "Or at least Federation. Is that what you were going to say?"

"You're half right," Anar acknowledged without clarifying which. Nadya rejoined shortly them with an interesting statement.

"Janice said to tell you she can't come right now."

Anar sighed. The child, never mind the Cardassians, was destined to be the death of him. One would think of all the things he had managed to learn over the past six months, Janice would have managed to learn one thing. "Tell Janice she has to," he corrected his granddaughter gently, not to alarm her, or enrage their guests. "Gul…"

"Dukat," Weyoun supplied. 

It was Anar's turn to pause. "Dukat?" he repeated to Anon. "Meaning you? Or meaning..?"

"No, meaning him," Weyoun nodded playfully. "You're quite right. It is quite a name to live up to -- or to live down."

"Actually," Anar offered Anon, "all I was going to say is it doesn't change anything if you have Gul Dukat or Jem'Hadar among your group. Janice would never stand for our apathy, I'm afraid. And we gave up arguing with her about it quite some time ago."

"I am Gul Dukat," Anon assured. "Who are among my group are Cardassians."

"As is their commander among his own listing of wounded," Anar agreed with a nod for that tunic.

"And _what_ will not change," the young Gul inclined forward in an effort to look particularly dangerous and deadly for this poised and confident Bajoran who may have survived his father's Occupation, but wouldn't necessarily survive his, "is your assistance. Or I will kill your tribe, beginning with your pregnant daughter, and take your doctor."

As the Federation would say it was a flip of a coin if he would or he wouldn't. He might. But then again if Anar truly believed and trusted the infinite wisdom of the Prophets, it was always possible this Gul Dukat was as terrified of the prospect of having to kill a pregnant woman than he was of losing his position in front of his men.

"Elise," Anar identified his son's wife with a smile, comfortable with the secrets of the ages even if he wasn't comfortable with the reality of the age. "And, no, you won't. Not because you're not capable, simply because you won't have to."

Anar's granddaughter reemerged from the Temple with an athletic looking young woman in male dress and hiking boots. Her complexion reddened and tanned from the Bajoran sun. Her wildly wiry, long brown hair pulled back in a loose tail tied down by a primitive leather strap.

"She's Human?" Anon questioned with a puzzled scrutiny of the hair that looked traditionally Klingon to him.

"Yes," Anar replied. "The half that was right."

"What?" Anon's frown turned on him.

"Janice is a Neutral, not Federation," Anar explained. "Ardently so."

"Neutral," Anon turned back to the woman standing in front of him with a soft and pleasant expression on her face that he did not know was considered by Human standards to be attractive. A smile he understood, though dismissed it. "Our scans said only Bajorans are here."

"That can also be explained," Anar promised.

"I know it can be explained," Anon assured.

"Now?" Anar blinked.

"Later," Anon grunted, something else on his mind, anyway. "Why are you staring at me?" he irritably questioned the woman who had dropped her smile to peer at him curiously for some reason.

"Oh," Janice replied as pleasantly and curiously as the expression on her face. "Well, why are you shouting? I can hear you back at the Temple."

"Ah...well, yes, you are shouting," Anar diplomatically cleared his throat as Anon hesitated. "But that's all right."

"No, it isn't all right," Janice shook her head. 

"Yes, it is all right," Anar quickly corrected her foolishness. "His universal translator isn't working correctly, Janice." 

"Oh," Janice said that time with a frown for Anon's bloody tunic. "Is it in your chest? Nadya said something about you punching yourself in the head -- "

He grabbed her wrist when she reached out to touch him.

"Ask his permission first…" Anar hinted through tightly pursed lips, casually looking up and around. 

"Permission?" Janice blinked into Anon's unblinking red eyes. "But you called me. I'm Doctor Lange."

"Gul Dukat," he informed her.

Who? She really wanted to ask him. He presented his name as if she should know him immediately. She didn't. Vaguely familiar, Anar knew, was as close as she could get. He sighed again. 

Dukat read something else in the child's silence. "_Anon _Dukat," he groaned heavily in exasperation. The constant battle to establish his own identity outside his father's no more tiring than it was that day. "Yes, _Anon_ Dukat. Gul Anon Dukat. Son to the Imperial Emperor -- "

"_Janice _Lange," the woman interrupted him with emphasis and a light laugh; he returned to eyeing her. "Daughter to the Imperial Harrison Lange."

"Who?" Anon said.

"My father," Janice shrugged. "He could be a dictator too when he wanted to be."

"A dictator?" Anon repeated to Anar.

"A dictator," Janice promised. "May I have a look at your chest now, Anon? Or I'm just going to go back to the Temple -- not to be rude," she reassured Anar. "I really am very busy. I'm sure he can understand...If not respect that," she smiled again at Anon. "But then ryetalyn is an antidote, not a vaccine."

"Ryetalyn?" Anon had heard that word somewhere before.

"Yes, ryetalyn," Janice nodded. "You're below the fever line. Didn't you know that?"

Apparently not. "Did you just say fever line?" The Vorta Weyoun paled, paler than he already was as Anon and his men looked among themselves.

"Rigelian fever?" Janice offered Anon looking back at her. "You didn't know, did you? Half of the systems in this sector have been under quarantine for the last two months -- Not that that's detoured the Klingons," she admitted. "But you can't blame them, they're right. Where there's Rigelian fever, there's someone who has the antidote. You probably ran into a scouting party."

"I have a transport full of vital supplies I must get to Cardassia!" Anon dropped her hand to grasp her tightly by those frail shoulders she wore under her shirt, his face tight and pulsating with fury. Anar felt himself rear, ready to strike out in the child's defense but for some reason he wasn't moving. Neither was his son or any of them. The Prophets' will far more powerful than anyone's. "I don't have time for any stupid Federation games!"

"Federation games?" Janice wasn't trying to sound dense.

"Tricks! Ploys! Call them what you like, Janice Lange!"

"You have a hole in your chest, Anon," she reminded him. "Is that a stupid Cardassian game?"

"What?" he stopped.

"Bring your men to the Temple," she eased herself loose of him. "I'll do what I can to help you. I have a wonderful old mummy I found in the grotto last year if I get stuck with anything."

The Gul's expression was questioning. Confused. Anar cleared his throat again. "Actually, Janice's doctorate is in anthropology."

"With a second doctorate in forensic sciences," Janice grinned. "Not to brag. I'm an archeologist."

It wasn't an answer Anon believed he wanted to hear distorted by his translator or otherwise. "Forensic," he took a faltering step back from her, listening to his heart starting to pound. "Forensic...That's dead. Death. After someone has died..."

"For heaven's sake, you're not afraid of me, are you?" The woman was peering at him again.

"No, I am not afraid of you," Anon insisted. "I just think you are too young to have..." he wiped at his perspiring face, feeling the ground sway.

"Two doctorates?" Janice said. "I'm twenty-three. Is that still too young?"

"To be a doctor, or to be a Gul?" Anar wondered as Anon stiffened, or tried to before he fainted. "Probably yes to both. But that's all right, he'll take it."

CHAPTER TWO

He woke up in the Temple next to her wonderful old mummy that was not only female, but Bajoran, the suffocating stench of their incense threatening his stomach. "You think I look like her?"

"Well, no," Janice admitted from under her surgical mask as she sat there painting her bowl of broad, flat leaves with a thick, purple ointment. "Why? Did I say she was Cardassian?"

"You said she could give you information," he made an effort to sit up to see what she was doing; the effort failed. He fell back onto his back under a heavy weight holding him down.

"She can," she promised. "She gave me her recipe for the prevention of post-operative infection, and/or infection due to plasma burns -- see?" she held up one of her leaves before pressing it in place on his arm. "Guaranteed to last a minimum of four thousand years. What's best of all, it really works."

"Plasma burns," Anon scoffed. "I suppose she died of plasma burns."

"No more than she died from someone stabbing her in the chest with a knife."

"Ha!" Anon corrected her. "You mean a piece of my ship, and I took it out."

"Ha!" she corrected him. "You mean you broke it off. Not too bright."

"Really," Anon looked her up and down. "Why do you say that?"

"Because you cut your fingers when you did it," she picked up his hand to show him the little tell-tale slits in his fingertips. "And I almost cut mine trying to dig it out. Don't do it again. Which you probably will."

"The Klingons look worse," Anon struggled to see down over his chin to what he really looked like. "Why did you say I have to wear this stupid grass?"

"Do you really want purple goop all over your nice silver shirt?" 

"What?" 

"Because the Klingons who were here before your friends took our replicators the Klingons before them left?" Janice suggested. "And bandages are a precious commodity when you're a week by shuttle from the nearest outpost even if you weren't under quarantine and had a shuttle, which we are and don't?"

"Oh," Anon frowned, trying to piece it all together. "Why did the Klingons before the ones who took your supplies, leave them?"

"Because we still had men who could fight then," Anar let go of his shoulders to give him a hand up. "Those of our colony who didn't join the Federation in the Dominion 

war, ended up succumbing to the fever. We were very lucky Janice managed to locate a supply of ryetalyn, otherwise there would have been no one here when your transport crashed."

"It didn't crash," Anon assured. "I ordered the landing to repair the engines. Where did you find your ryetalyn? How did you get it if you can't leave here? Why wouldn't someone bring you bandages when they brought you your antidote?"

"Are you always this suspicious?" Janice teased.

"Answer me!" Anon insisted.

"All right," she shrugged. "They did bring me bandages. See?" she held one up, ready to wrap around his arm and keep his leaves in place. "But this way we can conserve what we have by using them for wraps and the leaves as the dressing. After that, we're back to cloth."

"Maquis," Anon nodded. "No one brought you anything. You stole it."

"Neutral," Janice shook her head. "Human Neutral born on Martian Colony 3 to Doctors Harrison and Rebecca Lange, also archeologists, also Neutrals. My father believed if you really wanted to get anywhere in this galaxy -- or at least get to _see _anything in this galaxy," she agreed, "the best way to do it was as a Neutral. He was right. Anar was afraid though once the war started my neutral status wouldn't be enough to protect me…so he gave me this…" she pushed up her sleeve to show him her implant. "It's a tiny, little transmitter that blocks your scans from recognizing my DNA as Human. To your systems, I'm just another tree."

"It's easy when you know how," Anar offered Anon. "And, yes, I admit, fifty years of Occupation, fifty years in the Resistance, I do know how. But we're still not Maquis. Janice would have taken her mummy and left us long before now."

"For where?" Anon scoffed at Janice. "It's pretty naïve of you to think your neutral status really means anything, anymore than that toy can protect you."

"Well, it's pretty naïve of you to think it doesn't mean anything," she handed him his shirt, "because it does. To me. That'll be bandages and a couple of weeks rations when you leave us. Until then Anar says you can use the town center -- if you want to stay in the village with your men. Or you can go back to your transport. I'd like it if you didn't. We have enough of the antidote to share, but why increase the risk of exposure to your men since you do have, or you will have Rigelian fever?"

"You don't know that," Anon shook his head.

"I do know that," she nodded. "The same as I know your second engineer has a lacerated liver. I've managed to stop the hemorrhaging, and Anar has issued a distress call to the outpost for their doctor. But it will be a week before he's here, if he'll come. I don't know if your engineer will live a week even with blood transfusions we may be able to take from your crew, but we can try -- "

"Try?" Anon interrupted.

She blinked. "Yes, try. You're not suggesting we shouldn't, are you?"

"No, of course I'm not suggesting that," Anon waved impatiently.

"Good," Janice pulled off her mask where he could see her smile; an impression from the cloth mask creasing her face above her upper lip. "Anar can help you with working your way through the maze of this place to find your men. I'll be in the Temple giving thanks…" she counted off. "Praying for a good season. That we have enough raw serum, which I know we do, but it doesn't hurt to mention it. And that's probably about it -- Other than your engines," she pointed at him. "Anar says you're not supposed to pray to the Prophets about things like engines. But the way I look at it, the engines are what make the transport move, and the transport carries the supplies you need to get home to your people. So, definitely, I'll make sure I mention your engines."

"Yes, she's serious," Anar claimed when Anon stayed frowning after Janice as she left them. "Serious about everything she says, and everything she does."

"That would be stupid," Anon decided with a sneer. "You, too." His hard red eyes drilled into Anar. "I know that face. I've seen it."

"Shakaar Adon," Anar accepted the challenge to embrace or deny his family with an incline of his head. "A curse or a blessing I wear the face and carry the name even if I don't harbor the soul. I've heard that before, of course. All his Minister's life. A face is difficult to hide. It is your arm that is burned, not your eyes. As my eyes are fifty-eight, not blind. I know your brother's face. I've seen it. Yours is new."

"Aren't I in the Temple?" Anon insisted when Anar turned from him to move Janice's mummy back out of harm's way, reactivating her protective field so she would be certain and survive another thousand years.

"You're in the morgue, actually. Our power sources are limited. Sterile fields consume energy -- nine surgeries in a row? That's an enormous amount of energy."

"That's not a waste of energy right there?" Anon gave a stiff nod for the finely wrinkled cadaver, missing the significance of what Anar was saying.

"Yes, it is," Anar agreed. "In my opinion it is. But I'm not going to tell Janice no. She's her inspiration…Did you hear what I said to you?" his checked temper edged close to the surface over the Gul's uncompromising arrogance when what he should be expressing was gratitude. "The child just spent twelve hours saving your life and the lives of seven of your men. And no, she isn't a medical doctor."

"I heard what you said," Anon assured. "If my engineer dies your Janice Lange will pay with her life. Is that understood?"

"Actually," Anar contemplated the ceiling, standing there with his hands on his hips, "yes, it is. If not all too keenly familiar. Have confidence in yourself, Gul Dukat. I repeat, your presence is noted and effective whether we are farmers…Or whether we are…" his gaze dropped to Anon with emphasis and meaning, "in truth, surviving Maquis."

"Then why doesn't she understand it?" Anon was back to frowning in the direction Janice had left, and Anar paused.

"I asked you a question," his cold, accusing stare bore back into Anar. Still, he didn't look anything like his father at all. Not in the features of his face, or those penetrating eyes. He didn't sound like him. Not in the affectations of his voice, or its tone. He didn't stand like him. Pose, or strut like him. Did he think like him? Anar couldn't decide. 

"You mean because she has two doctorates by age twenty-three?"

"That is exactly what I mean," Anon insisted. "She is an intelligent woman. She has to know it is not in her best interest to dismiss me. If she doesn't, explain it to her."

"By the Prophets I've tried to," Anar's mouth twisted in his smile. "More than about you. I'm not sure why or what Janice doesn't understand." He thought about the question. "I do know Janice isn't dismissing you. You're simply equal in her eyes perhaps? Not higher or lower than anyone? Why? I don't know," he maintained. "I've no idea what it is Janice sees when she looks at people, or even things. She was five years old when her father took her on her first dig. Close to the age I was when my father took me on my first raid. At fifty-eight I'm not the oldest Town Elder there ever was, but unfortunately, I'm also far from the youngest." 

It was a poignant point. Meant to underscore the horror of a society that had endured years of occupation and war. To achieve the life span of fifty-eight years should not be the goal of a modern society, and certainly not one of a future generation.

Anon missed the point entirely. The same as he missed the romanticism and inspiration of things specific, and life in general. A flaming sunset by way of example, whether its rays inspired romance or world domination, he missed it either way. Had Anar been aboard the transport during her battle with the Klingons he would have realized it, as well as understood a part of what was confusing him now about the young Gul. It wasn't revenge, or glory that drove Anon Dukat. It was the simple fact he needed to get the Klingons off his back. Once it was over, it was over. 

"Fifty years," Anar stared out at the dying embers of sunlight sprinkled through the darkening air. "I was there at the beginning, and there at the end. It is inconceivable to me how many of my people I have watched die. But, still no, I have no idea what the answer is to your question that Janice claims is very simple."

"Simple," Anon scoffed.

"That we're all the same," Anar stared thoughtfully into the shadows cloaking the landscape and moving figures outside, muting their definitions and outlines until you couldn't tell who or what they were…other than the giant whose name Anar believed was Tan. Posting guard and standing close beside the younger one whose face, contours, body and carriage was so strikingly a mirror image of the father Dukat even in the dark. Anar nodded. "Simply that we're all the same. Her doctorates didn't teach her that, nor confirm her belief for her. They merely support her -- like that mummy over there," he straightened up. "Who died of drowning, by the way. And, yes, I owe the creature a bit of thanks myself. There were a few die-hard traditionalists I can think of who lived here who would have blamed Janice's removing the mummy from her natural grave as what brought the wrath of the Prophets down upon us. First as the war. Then as the Rigelian plague. The truth is, both the war and the fever came first. We had no idea what the fever was initially. All we knew was everyone was sick and everyone was dying. Without Janice's medical background, we may never have known. Even once we knew we had to continue burying our dead until we could locate the antidote. That's how Janice found her, digging a grave. She had been doing work out here in the colonies for over a year. She had been with us for over six months, just about three weeks before the Federation-Dominion war started. And nothing. Bits of pottery, a few pieces of jewelry, and suddenly there she was. Four thousand years old, perfectly preserved. Flesh, organs. No more than a couple of meters beneath the earth. In her spare time Janice has been conducting every conceivable study on the soil, the plant life, water, air. And who knows? Perhaps there is something here of lasting value beyond a scientific quirk -- that, yes, I understand a great many of these types of discoveries can turn out to be. A once in a lifetime, and only once in a lifetime.

"There's at least that purple goop," he chuckled with an indication of Anon's hand. "As Janice calls it. A word to the wise, though. Don't let Janice's informality mislead you. She can tell you every organism and chemical there is to her compound. She concocted it from mud scrapings she took from her mummy. A premise based solely on the radical theory that if the flesh of one being could reject deterioration and infection for four thousand years, what would happen if you applied it to the burning flesh of a living body? Could it possibly control an existing infection? Assist in preventing the chronic course of re-infection? Have you ever seen Rigelian fever? Even the antidote is useless after a certain point. It certainly can't create tissue regeneration in a body that's been literally eaten away. So those scrapings would either help, or they would hurt, or they would do nothing. We prayed they would help. Our prayers were answered. Answered again two days later when Janice and I managed to locate a colony who had the ryetalyn. More importantly, willing to share."

"Why didn't you just simply give everyone the antidote once you had it?" Anon demanded coarsely.

"Why didn't those Klingon cruisers just kill you instead of it being the other way around?" Anar gripped the table in anger. "It's in the air around you. The soil. The water you drink. It has to run its course. Viruses mutate constantly from the simplest cold, to the deadliest disease!"

"Oh," Anon said, unmoved by the outburst. "What happened to her hair?"

"What?" Anar said. "Her hair?" he repeated as Anon rose from the table to put on his shirt. "Whose hair?"

"Janice's," Anon nodded. "It sticks out."

"Sticks out?" Anar glanced down the path Janice had taken. "What are you saying? That Janice's hair is some sort of measure of her ability to treat your men adequately?"

"What?" Anon turned around to him.

"No, of course you're not saying that," Anar shook his head in agreement. "You couldn't possibly be. What does Janice's hair have to do with anything? Where's the correlation? There isn't any. Is there?" he stared at Anon.

"I said her hair sticks out," Anon replied coldly.

"We were discussing the child's education and background!" Anar's fist struck the table. "I am attempting to alleviate your suspicions that Janice might harm your men. Even by way of something such as lack of education. Which would be through no fault of her own! Except even that isn't going to happen. I firmly believe Janice is quite capable of saving any man who can be saved. The same as I highly question any doctor in the galaxy could save your engineer. That man had to have been lying under a crossbeam crushing his abdomen for hours!"

"Four hours," Anon pulled on his tunic, moving to survey the mummy lying there in her tranquil state. "You are right. Janice's education is not important to me. It's important to me my man lives. I don't care who saves him. The finest doctor in the galaxy, or some Janice Lange. It is as immaterial as her hair -- Which sticks out," he assured.

"Yes," Anar agreed, fascinated. "Yes, it does. I suppose it does stick out. It stuck out like that when she came here."

"Like a Klingon's," Anon's disdainful eye strayed over the mummy. "She has the fragile face of a Bajoran and the hair of a Klingon. An air of energy, rather than mysticism around her. I've never met a Human before. I am not sure what I think of them. I am familiar with the Federation belief Cardassians and Bajorans are cousins from the same seed and it's bullshit. It's probably bullshit to suggest the Klingons and Humans are cousins, too."

"I don't believe…" Anar answered slowly, "anyone's ever proposed that particular theory before."

"Good," Anon said. "Because it doesn't make any sense to me."

He didn't look like it didn't. He looked and sounded very much like he was questioning something. Rather innocently. In a way such a child might do. Walk in a room and ask why the sky was green, blue or gold. Not because they really wanted to know necessarily, simply because it was a thought that had occurred to them. 

"No," Anar cautiously pressed, "carefully constructed interrogation?"

The Gul eyed him. Understandable because it was a valid point. Even though Anar hadn't meant to voice his thinking out loud, suggesting Anon might only be asking questions because he was by nature a person who asked questions without pre-existing motives. Innocence? That was a thought Anar managed to keep to himself. There was an inconceivable air of youthful innocence alive in Anon Dukat. Unwashed away by training and the legacy of the man who sired him. What was even more inconceivable was to suggest the young Gul wasn't thinking seriously about things like surviving Maquis cells incorporated among Bajor's outer colonies. Of course he was. Innocence wasn't stupidity, it was simply innocence. Occasionally preoccupied with other things more important to it.

"I am also familiar that tribal medicines have been around for thousands of centuries on every planet in this galaxy," Anon either warned or simply mentioned. "The same," his eyes met Anar's, "as I am familiar, it is not only your viruses and diseases that mutate, but the simple principle that we are not all the same."

He didn't walk like his father either. Anar frowned after Anon striding away through the soft light of the cold, stone corridor. The pace was fast, a stalk. His back stiff and arched. The steps he took as broad as they were long as he seemed to walk from side to side as well as forward, the arms swinging along at his sides. His face set in concentration looking neither left nor right as he cleared a path for himself, unmindful of whether anyone noticed him or not, which they did. Long before they ever knew his name. A detached and unemotional, stiffly serious young man who walked…

"Like a man who's just gotten off a horse." Anar's brow remained wrinkled in its pensive wondering. "Her hair sticks out?" He still wasn't sure he fully understood that one, and so he just shook his head, tired of thinking about any Gul Dukat. "It must be me. What's in a name? The power in a name?" Was there power in a name? Could there just be something about the name Dukat that mandated the wearer strive to make a lasting impression? 

"You know the answer to that without the Prophets' assistance." Anar turned to study his softly aging face reflected by the power console. Its features and aura made famous by his charismatic nephew. "And would I have likely expected you, Adon, to grace my humble township long before the flesh of Prefect Dukat. To believe the soul of a savior could be born of the womb of Cardassia is one thing. To believe one could be born of the loins of Dukat? I must say the Prophets' faith in my ability to look beyond the stench of ten million corpses is interesting. I pray for the souls of the future and those alive in its past, that it is not misplaced."

__

"Father?" his daughter-in-law's voice called over the com system.

"Yes?" he answered her hail.

__

"Just checking." Anar could hear her fear she attempted to cover with her laugh. _"Your son is pacing."_

"My son always paces," he assured. "Remind him you carry life in your stomach. The Prophets have never betrayed our faith and trust before, they will not betray us now. They are simply tired, as I am, of watching my children die."

__

"I'll tell him."

"Good."

The engineer died the following afternoon. Anar canceled the call to the outpost. Half of Anon's crew contracted Rigelian fever within three days whether he returned to the transport or not. He returned to the transport, and was one of the first to return to the village desperately sick with the plague. Janice was kind about it, teasing and joking as she reminded him how she had told him so. Assuring him yes, it was all his fault, as he lay there sweating black sweat, his temperature edging up over a hundred, delusional with visions of Klingons leaning over him.

"Whoops!" Janice caught her bowl of painted leaves and purple goop as Anon lashed out, almost sending all of her hard work flying. "No, we don't want to do that!"

"He thinks you're a Klingon," Anar laughed.

"What?" 

"He's afraid of your hair." 

"My hair?" Janice blinked down on the man gasping for air through his overheated skin. "Oh, my goodness. No, we can't have that either." So she borrowed his insulated shirt to tie around her head, covering her hair. "This to you looks normal," she nodded, proceeding to change his dressings without further incident. Anar just hung his head with a resigned shake. "I am wearing a shirt on my head, but this to you looks normal. Boy, are you sick."

Eighteen hours later the antidote finally took effect and Anon was better to spend the next three days violently ill from the serum. They never could get the engines to work, not well enough to lift off. Between the fever, the quarantine and the red tape, it was two months before a new Cardassian transport was able to secure the crew and the cargo from Anon's ship that had inadvertently set down on the remote world called home by the remnants of Anar's band of Maquis raiders. A proud troop first beset by Klingons in the Klingon-Cardassian war. Then a Neutral archeologist with failing shuttle controls. Then the Federation-Dominion war that brought more trouble with the Klingons than anyone else. Then the fever, the quarantine, and finally Anon and his Cardassians. It was suddenly eight months down a road Anar had had little control over traveling. He wasn't certain he wasn't becoming comfortable with the road. In a lot of ways the journey was familiar. The fever and quarantine simply a different kind of fight for survival against such staggering odds.

Federation regulations controlling the distribution of the serum were strict to prevent mishandling of the supply. But even if it had just been passed out on street corners like loaves of bread to starving mouths, the Maquis would not have been among the recipients. Their once powerful organization officially declared destroyed by the Cardassians, the decade long chapter of resistance forever closed, it remained a Federation offense to provide food, shelter or medical supplies to any known outfit or settlement sympathetic to the Maquis. Violation of the embargo carried a mandatory prison sentence. It didn't seem to matter nor keep the bureaucrats awake at night that the sanctions in the face of something such as Rigelian fever was a death sentence imposed on people who didn't necessarily warrant being condemned to death. The justifying rationale? For all the eight year old Nadyas who died instead of lived, it was their Maquis grandfather Anar who killed them by his actions, not the Federation sanctions.

Neutrals were immune from Federation sanctions. They could not be held accountable for treating Bajorans, Maquis or Cardassians alike. For every bureaucrat Anar cursed at night before he fell asleep, he thanked the Prophets for sending them Janice Lange. What continued to confuse his clear and perfect world was why the Prophets had also sent Anon and his transport laden down with supplies that Anar never even considered investigating -- he'd like to think because he simply didn't have the means or men available.

The same as he'd like to think Anon never got around to conducting his own investigation into just who these settlers actually were, simply because he didn't have the interest or the time, even though Cardassians always had the interest and the time. Anon Dukat was a paradoxical young man. Not yet settled in his own identity. Prudent and formal in his actions, as actions were what counted and defined the man.

Either that or he was simply better at putting on a more believable show than his father. Less obvious in his attempted seduction of young women and town elders.

CHAPTER THREE

"Oh, Anar look at all of this stuff!" Janice squealed over the variety of containers waiting for them in one of the transport's cargo holds.

"There's enough here for six months…" Anar joined her in staring over the neat stacks of supplies.

"Six, seven months, yes," Anon agreed, "until your fields start to produce."

"Our fields…" Anar started to say, but Anon was already turning away from him to bear down on a replicator.

"This, too. You can have it."

"The replicator?" Janice blinked.

"You said supplies and bandages, right?" Anon reminded her. "There are your supplies, and here are your bandages. I can't program the banks…Well, yes, I can program them," he adjusted his claim not to lower himself in her eyes. "I just don't have the time -- " he jumped back three feet when she kissed his cheek, terror scrawled across his face. "What are you doing?!"

"Saying thank you?" Janice suggested as he stood there irritably swatting at his cheek.

"Thank you?" he accused her. "Is this how you say thank you to someone?"

"Well, someone, yes," Janice supposed with a shrug. "No, not everyone."

"No, not everyone," Anon agreed. "And not me!"

"I'm sure Janice didn't mean to offend you," Anar tried not to laugh at Anon's surprising discomfort. "It's a Human tradition."

"I'm Cardassian, not Human," Anon gave his cheek one last angry swipe. "We kiss for specific reasons."

"So do Humans," Anar promised. "The same as the rest of the galaxy. A form of thanks is only one of them."

"The rations are Cardassian," Anon ignored him to return to the supplies. "You realize that."

"I realize I don't care." Anar answered honestly. "And neither will anyone else."

"Good," Anon set a weapons locker down in front of them with a bang. "This is how someone expresses thank you. They accept what is given…"

"Phaser rifles?" Janice said when Anon flipped open the locker; Anar could only stare.

"Six of them," Anon picked one of them up. "And extra cell packs -- "

"Oh, but we don't need…" 

"Now, wait a minute, Janice," Anar stopped her as Anon huffed, "Janice!"

"But we don't need them," Janice insisted. "We really don't."

"Yes, you do!" Anon's arms flailed in demonstration. "What are you going to do if the Klingons come again? Just give them your replicator like you did your last one?"

"He has a point, Janice," Anar supported quietly. "We do need them for protection."

"Exactly. For protection. No one is going to win a war with six rifles, Janice. And no one is going to start one!" he slammed the rifle back inside the locker, closing it. "Take them, don't take them. They're here, they're yours, do with them what you want. If I had a shuttle I'd give you one of them, too -- with charged phaser banks!" he smacked the locker and left.

"Something I said?" Janice winced to Anar reopening the locker with a low whistle.

"It's a new one, I have to admit. Cardassians giving phasers to the Maquis -- you didn't hear that," he reminded her. "A wise and kindly town elder. Nothing more. Nothing less."

"No. No, I did hear it, Anar," Janice shook her head. "And you're wrong. Anon's wrong, and you're wrong. He means well, but the only thing he's right about it is no one is going to win a war with six rifles. They're not. Not against the Cardassians. Not against the Klingons," she picked up one of the rifles. "Six rifles, Anar? Against a squadron of Klingons? That isn't protection, it's suicide."

"So what do we do instead? Give them the replicator when they return? If they return? They will return."

"Yes. That's exactly what we do. Give them the replicator, and everything else. Except our lives."

Anar took the rifle away from her to remove its power cell. "You're right, of course."

Janice grinned. "I am?" 

"Yes. Though there's no guarantee they won't take our lives even if we don't aim phasers at them."

"But we probably stand a better chance," she nodded.

"Yes," Anar heaved a sigh tinged with fond memories for the rifle, "we probably stand a better chance -- until harvest. I don't know anything about farming. Not a reaper from a sower -- What?" he said to her gasp. "Why? Do you?"

"No, it's not that. I forgot to give Anon the serum!"

"Oh. Well, I'm sure he's still here. That's all right. You go and I'll…I'll dismantle the rifles and put them in the replicator," he agreed. "The power cells we can probably use for something else."

"Like repairing the transmitter?" Janice smiled.

"Well, that we can probably fix with what we manage to scrounge from the transport's communication system -- we'll have to see. Depends on what else Anon may have left us -- not that this isn't enough. It is. Certainly more than anything I ever expected."

"Oh," Janice bit her lip, suddenly a little concerned others might see Anon's generosity in a different light. "Why? Do you think he's going to get in trouble?"

Anar chuckled. "To the contrary. I'm sure whatever is not accounted for in his inventory he'll just pass off as having been destroyed in the crash."

"Landing," Janice nodded.

"Crash," Anar assured. "He landed all right. With a bang. Now, run and give him the ryetalyn before he does leave us. And I'll…I'll…" he grimaced at the rifle in his hand.

"The first one's the hardest," Janice promised, leaving to catch Anon before he transported aboard his new ship.

"I believe you mean the last one," Anar set the replicator to assimilate the rifle's housing, closing his eyes with a quick prayer to the Prophets he was doing the right thing.

"Oh, your Eminence," Weyoun brightly called Anon's attention away from checking over the equipment removed from the downed transport when Janice appeared through the cargo door on the run toward them. "I believe Doctor Lange might be looking for you."

The young Sentinel Pfrann looked up quickly, a flicker of apprehension clouding his bright, golden stare.

"Yes, all right." Anon's answered Weyoun, his question of his brother equally benign. "Is this the last of it?"

"Yes," Pfrann agreed quietly. "Anon…"

"Order it aboard," Anon tossed him the padd with its list of inventoried items.

"Understood." Pfrann's apprehension lingered, watching his brother walk away.

"Or is it just me?" Weyoun smiled.

"It's you!" Pfrann snapped, hammering his communication badge.

"Of course," Weyoun inclined his head.

Her hair was flying free and loose like a maddened Klingon's as she ran up to him. "Did you change your mind?" he wondered.

Janice breathed deeply to catch her breath. "About what? The phaser rifles? No. Anar changed his. We're keeping the power cells, but destroying the housings, yes."

"Of course," Anon nodded ruefully. "You're a dangerous woman, Janice Lange, you know that? Far more dangerous than me."

"Oh," Janice said. "Well, I don't happen to think you're that dangerous," she shrugged.

"You don't?" he paused. "Oh. Well, you're wrong. Look at me. I am dangerous. Pfrann, too. Tan. All of us. That's the way it is."

"Well, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. In the meantime…" she handed him the vile of ryetalyn. "Anar and I would like you to have this to remember us. It's raw serum."

"Raw serum…" Anon stared at the slender silver tube he held.

"Ryetalyn. The epidemic's over -- at least here. I don't think it reached your colonies. I hope it didn't, or that it ever will. But just in case you should ever need it, now you have it. There's enough there to save…maybe two thousand people? I realize it's not a lot -- "

"It's a lot," Anon corrected, and she smiled again. "What about you?"

"Oh, we're fine. Really. We have plenty. More than enough to share with the next transport that happens by…And Anar's really looking forward to getting back to the fields -- or into the fields," Janice laughed. "You can't replicate a sower can you? Or even just a manual on farming?" she finished nervously.

"I don't know," Anon studied the vile.

"Oh," Janice said. "Oh, well, I'm sure you could. The same as I'm sure Anar can. So I guess this is goodbye then."

"Yes, it is goodbye," Anon agreed.

"Yes," Janice stepped back with a wave towards the transport site. "Well, you better go. Pfrann's waiting. Weyoun -- what's going to happen with Weyoun now that the war is over?" she wondered suddenly, really never having thought of it before.

He was going to kill him. Anar knew that, standing there in the cargo hatchway watching them. The Vorta was a liability the Gul had carried much longer than he had planned. More so now because he was also a witness. 

"Anon?" Janice asked.

"Thank you," he saluted her with the vile of serum and turned away. He turned back after a step to Anar's surprise, but then again it wasn't.

"Anon?" Janice said.

He kissed her. To him it was like kissing a soft, silk pillow. To her it was like kissing a smooth, cool piece of leather.

"Thank you again," he nodded when he let her go.

Janice swallowed. "Any -- anytime." 

"Like father, like son," Anar mentioned from behind after Anon and his group transported off the planet. Janice jumped. "Sorry. I didn't mean to startle you."

"Oh, no, you didn't startle me," she denied, flushed and breathing a little heavier than she did normally. "What do you mean like father, like son?"

"Well…" Anar said as they walked back to the transport, "not to malign a criminally insane man…"

"Oh, please!" Janice swatted him with a laugh. "You're maligning him just by saying that!"

"Worse has been said," Anar promised. "All of it true. So, yes, it's also accurate to say the senior Dukat had as notorious of a reputation when it came to women. Especially Bajoran. Especially young ones."

"Well, I'm not Bajoran," Janice tucked her arm through his. "And actually I think he's kind of cute."

"Anon?" Anar smiled. "For a Cardassian, I suppose he is."

"You're not shocked."

"No, my child," he assured. "I'm far more shocked that at age fifty-eight I'm about to become a farmer."

"You'll make a wonderful farmer," Janice believed. "You'll see."

CHAPTER FOUR

Stardate: _5…4…3…2…1…_

Major Kira Nerys stood on the Ops deck stifling a yawn.

"The Cardassian government has petitioned the Federation with a request to install the First Cardassian Consulate on Bajor Prime in an effort to improve the standard of living among its Cardassian-Bajoran citizens." The deep brown eyes of Captain Benjamin Sisko, Federation commander of the Bajoran outpost station Deep Space Nine, twinkled as he leaned over her cup of Klingon raktajino with a Cheshire cat grin.

"Huh?" Kira's Bajoran eyes looked back at him, and Sisko's grin widened.

"Don't you just love it?"

"Benjamin, I haven't even had my coffee yet," she suggested. "Could we wait with the jokes?"

"It's not a joke," Sisko shook his head.

"It's a joke," Kira assured.

"It's not a joke," Sisko shook his head.

"What do you mean it's not a joke?" Kira eyed him.

"I mean…" Sisko gently removed the cup of raktajino from her hand, leading her towards his office, "it's not a joke."

"Oh, for!" The heel of Kira's boot struck the deck sharply as she stalked into the office. Eventually she calmed down.

"I mean," she paced back and forth with Sisko watching her from behind his desk, "what am I concerned about? I'm not concerned. There is no way the Federation is going to listen to this. They're not even going to consider listening to this."

"I have my doubts about that also," Sisko agreed.

"Of course you do," Kira ran her fingers through her short, dark red hair, her nod firm. "Of course you do. It's nonsense. It's utter and complete nonsense. It is by far the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard."

A week later the Federation had decided otherwise.

"What?!" Kira's fingernails threatened the smooth surface of Sisko's desk as she loomed over him.

Sisko put up his hand. "They've only agreed to present the matter at their next session for discussion."

"Oh," Kira said. "Oh, well, I suppose there's really no way around that -- Is there?" She was back to eyeing Sisko.

"Not really, no," Sisko admitted. "If Federation and Cardassian relations are to continue to improve -- "

"Why do they have to continue to improve?" Kira verified.

"Because they have to," Sisko nodded, and she shrugged.

"It was worth a try."

"So it was. And I wouldn't be concerned, no."

"I'm not. This way the Federation Assembly can -- can -- "

"Discuss the matter?" Sisko offered.

"Right. They can discuss the matter, and the Cardassian government will just have to accept their decision."

Two weeks later the decision was to send it out for a vote.

"A vote?" Kira echoed. "Did you just say a vote? They're seriously sending it to the floor for a vote?"

"It'll never pass," Sisko promised.

It passed.

"Passed?" Kira's voice was shrill. "It passed?"

"Major," Sisko's hand went to his forehead, a pounding headache throbbing behind his eyes, the smooth flesh of his brow wrinkled in concentration. 

"Damar has no more interest in the Bajoran-Cardassian situation than anyone before him!" Kira insisted.

"I agree with that, Major. However Legate Damar -- "

"Legate," Kira threw in with a sneer. "He's a helmsman!"

Sisko continued. "Is claiming to have an interest, as well as requesting an opportunity to do something about it."

"And the Federation Assembly bought it!"

"Yes, they bought it," Sisko paused to think about that briefly.

"But it isn't true!"

"No," Sisko also agreed with that.

"He's looking," Kira gestured wildly, "to install some organized, centralized spy network!"

"Aren't they all?" Sisko sighed.

"What?" Kira said.

"A reputation, Major," Sisko nodded, "that has followed the idea of Consulates for years."

"In the instance of Cardassia, it's true! The war hasn't even been over six months!"

"Major?" Sisko requested.

"All right, fine," Kira took a deep breath. "I'm sorry. It's not you. There's still the Council of Ministers. Shakaar will kill the petition himself before it reaches the Vedek Assembly."

"On the basis of frivolity alone, he has that authority," Sisko concurred.

First Minister Shakaar Adon of Bajor forewent exercising his authority. The Vedek Assembly forewent expressing opinion. Sisko studied the notice from Bajor's Council of Ministers agreeing to Bajor's participation in a series of talks with the Federation and Cardassian government.

"Except Bajor's participation, Major," Sisko explained to Kira, "will be by way of a Neutral employed by the Council of Ministers and sent in representation to hear the Cardassian proposal."

"There has to be some mistake," Kira borrowed the padd have a look.

"No mistake, Major." Sisko stood up to study the Ops area through the windows of his office where Chief O'Brien worked diligently at removing the last traces of Dukat's recent occupation alongside Dax, Worf and others at their respective consoles; all comfortable and comforted by six quiet months.

"What are you thinking?" Kira was at his side.

"The truth?" Sisko answered quietly. "A great many things. Not all of them good. Under guise of wanting to ensure fair and unbiased participation due to the sensitive subject of the Bajoran-Cardassian situation, the truth is any improvements which may have come of these sessions will be completely unbinding on the part of Bajor with a Neutral acting as representative. First Minister Shakaar is playing his cards close to the vest, never mind anyone else, and quite frankly, that to me reeks of a token effort. Simply put, why bother? Unfortunate, in my opinion, because, yes, I do see an opportunity being wasted here."

"What opportunity?" Kira denounced. "The only opportunity Damar sees is a way to further his own agenda."

"Yes," Sisko agreed. "By ingratiating himself with the Federation, rather than seeking to ostracize Cardassia like Dukat. That is very true. As it was a perfect opportunity for the Federation to call Damar's bluff," he turned around to her. "Also true, Major. In the meantime, regardless of Damar's agenda, for him to accomplish it, we could have ended up with the first Cardassian Consulate on Bajor. Undeniable, and indisputable progress between your two worlds. Matters of the Bajoran-Cardassian population would have had to have been addressed for the first time in over fifty years. A point, obviously, Major," his head tipped in solemn concession, "that Bajor is not yet willing to address. Shakaar can't say no to Damar because he could be accused of undermining Federation-Cardassian negotiations. He can't say yes because he has the opinion of his own people to consider, as well as face."

"That doesn't sound like Shakaar to me."

No. Nor to Sisko either. Which was why the expression close to the vest. "What's his agenda?"

"I can't begin to think of one. Other than he doesn't trust Damar anymore than he trusted Dukat."

"Then say so," Sisko insisted. "At those talks, Major, say so. Don't send your maid to say it for you. Damn Damar. And, yes, damn ruffling a few Federation feathers. If progress is to be made, true progress, then this constant treadmill has to stop. Beyond wasting everyone's time, ten thousand people pour through those airlocks every day. Unless I am willing to wall this station off from the rest of the galaxy at a time when we have only just begun getting ourselves back to normal, the security risks for this type of affair are staggering. I am hardly anxious to begin addressing them for little more than sheer nonsense; I refuse to."

"I certainly agree with you there."

"Good!" Sisko approved excitedly. "Because we have a fight on our hands that I intend to win. Cardassia has jumped on Shakaar's bandwagon of neutrality with vigor. The Federation is not too far behind. Under the guidelines drawn and accepted, as Emissary to the Bajoran people I have been precluded from active participation in the talks either on behalf of Bajor or the Federation."

"What?" Kira gaped at him.

"So have you, Major," he advised. "As has Dax. By simple definition, as Emissary to the Bajoran people, I am not unbiased. Even if I surrendered my position, I am still the commander of this station, and therefore biased. You are a former member of the Bajoran Resistance, you can't be unbiased. Dax is married to Worf. A Klingon. And lest we all forget the Klingon-Cardassian conflict."

"This is utterly absurd!" Kira sputtered. "Fine! Exclude me! But you are the commander of this station, and Dax is a skilled arbitrator!"

"So she is. And if anyone should be seated at that table in representation of the Federation, either myself or Dax should be."

"Shakaar has to realize that!"

Sisko just looked at her.

"All right, fine," Kira conceded. "So Shakaar isn't taking it seriously. But what about Damar? How unbiased is he!"

"He isn't," Sisko assured. "Who he is, is the man whose idea is being brought to the table. A very clever man. In a gesture of support of Shakaar's concerns, Damar has offered to remove himself as the Cardassian representative. He'll be here for the talks, yes. But only in the background should his replacements have any questions regarding Cardassia's position."

"Replace_ments_?" Kira emphasized.

"A team of two," Sisko nodded. "A primary speaker and his aide -- and _that,_ Major," he pointed, "is what we are going to use as our argument."

"If Damar's speaker can have an assistant…" Kira believed she was following him. "Why can't the Federation?"

"Or at least someone available in the background to answer any questions that might arise concerning the Federation's position," Sisko smiled.

"You," Kira nodded. "Are you going to push for Dax to be the speaker?"

"I am. Who I would also like to push for is you. On behalf of Bajor. There aren't too many Neutrals familiar enough with the intricacies of the Bajoran social structure to present a coherent platform. Unless Shakaar truly is just looking for someone to sit there and mouth words, he has created quite a tall order for the Council of Ministers to fill."

"Yes he has," Kira frowned. "There's also the position of the Prophets to consider." 

"Precisely. I'm not proposing you're an expert, Major, but I am confident you are far more than adequately versed in your own beliefs than any Neutral to know if the Cardassian or Federation positions fall within an acceptable range of moderate interpretation -- specifically Vedek Bareil's interpretations. Shakaar's representative will be using the basis of Bareil's Cardassian Peace Accord as a formula for these sessions."

"Oh," Kira said. "Well, yes, I'd like to believe I'm versed in Bareil's writings -- even though I don't agree with half of them."

"You don't have to agree," Sisko reminded. "You have to be able to maintain an open mind."

She realized that. What she was not so confident about was her ability to detach herself well enough to be able sit in the same room as Damar. "About Damar? You want me to maintain an open mind with Damar?" Kira's face hardened in a grimace, her chest tight, the palms of her hands feeling wet with sweat.

"Can you do it?" Sisko was asking.

"He killed Ziyal!" she exploded. "No, she wasn't my daughter. I realize she was Dukat's daughter, but he murdered her!" There. She said it. Of all the things Dukat had ever done, Damar was the one who killed Ziyal. "What does that say about him and his concern for the Bajoran-Cardassian population! What does that say? He's sorry?"

"I'll push the issue to the wall and beyond if you tell me you can."

"Damar will never sit still for it."

"I'm willing to gamble Mister Damar will end up not having a choice."

"Start pushing," Kira pointed.

"Thank you!" Sisko said.

A month later Sisko's drive through the rigorous Federation and Bajoran screening process mired in red tape was still afloat. Another month and he knew his push for Dax was doomed when he received a communiqué requesting an alternative recommendation selected from his senior staff. He didn't have an alternative recommendation other than himself or Kira still under consideration as the assistant to the Bajoran representative. Reiterating Dax's credentials, he inserted Kira's name alongside his own and crossed his fingers. Six hours later the Federation's decision was on his desk.

"I beg your pardon?" Chief Engineer Miles O'Brien crawled out from under a conduit.

Sisko wet his lips. "You've been chosen as the Federation's Consular Representative for the opening session of Cardassia's conference with Bajor."

O'Brien had missed hearing about that one. "What Cardassian conference with Bajor?"

"We'll get to that," Sisko promised.

"Before or after we get to the part about is there something I know about being a Consular representative that I don't know I know?"

"I don't know," Sisko handed him a padd.

"Sounds about right. What's this?"

"Rules of Protocol," Sisko nodded.

"I guess that's as good a place as any to start," O'Brien pocketed the padd.

"Chief?" Sisko said.

"Well, it's not like it's tomorrow," O'Brien gestured. "I can finish what I'm doing, can't I?"

"Monday," Sisko nodded.

"Monday?" O'Brien squealed. "Today's Friday!"

It was Saturday evening before Sisko knew the name of Shakaar's representative scheduled to arrive by shuttle Monday morning two hours before the conference for her final medical screenings.

"Doctor Janice Lange?" Kira read the notice with a shrug. "Never heard of her."

Late Sunday afternoon before Sisko knew the name of Damar's representatives also scheduled to arrive by battle cruiser Monday morning a few hours before the conference for their final medical screenings.

"Gul Dukat," Sisko handed Chief Constable Odo the padd handed to him by a security officer who caught up with them on the bustling Promenade on their way to Odo's office to go over the security schedule for the conference.

"What?" Kira snatched the padd from Odo to stare up at Sisko. "His son?"

"Sons apparently," Sisko gazed out a porthole into the misleadingly peaceful vacuum of space. "Damar's covering all of his bases evidently includes an attempted strangle hold on the Cardassian public. Dukat has his critics, but he also has his fans."

"This is too much! We just got rid of one of them, now we have two?"

"Probably changes a few things at that, doesn't it?" Odo grunted.

"Just a few," Sisko turned around.

"What's the latest word from the Federation Assembly about your and Major Kira's appointments?" Odo asked. "Or has there been any word?"

"Funny," Sisko smiled, "for some reason I was just thinking of making a call."

CHAPTER FIVE

Time: 2375 Eight months post Federation-Cardassian war 

Place: Bajoran Outpost Station Deep Space Nine

Stardate: Unknown 

"Ah, here's two more of us," Chief Medical Officer for Deep Space Nine, Doctor Julian Bashir bit into his flavorful jumja stick, a boyish grin crinkling his handsome face for the station's resident newlyweds Commanders Jadzia Dax and Worf working their way through the crowded second level of Quark's Ferengi bar and entertainment palace, to join him waiting with their resident Cardassian tailor Garak, and their one and only Chief Engineer.

"Eh, heh."

For some reason Chief O'Brien didn't seem quite as amused by this whole affair as Julian. Garak feigned shocked to realize this, while Dax availed herself of the opportunity to critique their good doctor's eating habits.

"What was your first clue?" O'Brien rolled his eyes. "When I groaned, or when I moaned?"

"Appetizer of choice?" Dax smiled in greeting, sitting down.

"Oh, quite," Bashir assured. "Had to do something while waiting. Eating seemed like a good idea."

"_'Eating seemed like a good idea_,'" O'Brien mimicked with a snort. "Go ahead. Fine. Rub it in."

"Julian threatened the Chief with an annual physical," Garak disclosed for Dax. "If you're wondering how he managed to convince him to join us. It's my understanding over the last six months he's gained ten pounds -- "

"Do you mind?" O'Brien interrupted.

"Well, personally no," Dax said. "You look your usual vibrant and healthy self to me."

"Another comedian," O'Brien nodded. "But laugh, go ahead laugh. So I may have gained a little weight. What of it?"

"Well, what of it," Bashir cautioned, "is ten pounds every six months times six years begins to add up."

"Yes," Worf frowned at the Chief, a strong man with a strong frame as Jadzia had proposed. "You have gained one hundred and twenty pounds since the Enterprise? That does not seem possible."

"Two hundred," O'Brien assured, "at least. No, I haven't gained 120 pounds. Julian has. In his head."

"It was meant in a hypothetical sense," Bashir explained. "Whose point is, there's no time like the present to begin eating sensibly."

"I like my food to have a little taste to it," O'Brien reminded. "I can always eat what you call sensibly when Keiko returns."

"Oooooh," Bashir hooted around the table. "Now that was a low blow. The poor woman's not even here to defend herself."

"That's not what I meant," O'Brien groaned. "Look, just change the subject. Now. Change it."

"Yes, please," Garak petitioned. "Really, Julian, you are very close to being insensitive."

"By promoting good health?" Bashir blinked innocently. "That's an interesting theory. But, fine," he surrendered, "you want to change the subject, we'll change it -- is the verdict in yet as far as who the Chief can expect to be his assistant pencil-pusher?"

"Not yet." Worf was noticeably concerned by the continuing delay himself. The Captain's assessment of an overwhelming burden facing the security task force was reasonable and accurate even if Sisko was not likely to find himself sequestered for a week. It was a burden made worse when Worf, though Chief of Strategic Operations, by virtue of being Klingon, was excluded from being involved with the small assembly of diplomats, as had Jadzia been excluded as his wife. Even though Jadzia, a joined Trill, hosted the symbiont Dax formerly hosted by Curzon. One of the most widely respected Federation mediators of the times. 

"But the Federation and the Bajoran Council of Ministers have reassured the Captain he will have their answer by tomorrow," Worf concluded stiffly.

"That's cutting it just a little close, isn't it?" Bashir looked to Dax. "After all, the Chief's conference is scheduled to begin tomorrow at 0900 sharp -- That's less than fourteen hours from now," he reminded O'Brien, lest he had forgotten.

"I'd like to," O'Brien assured.

"Hadn't noticed," Bashir grinned. "But that's what you get."

"For what?" O'Brien snorted. "How?"

"For being the last one available for the Captain to choose -- which reminds me," Bashir withdrew a message cylinder from his pocket to wave at Dax. "I've brought something for you to read…"

"Now, Julian," Dax shook her long, dark, and lovely hair in pity, "have you been writing letters to yourself again?"

"Ha, ha," Bashir pressed the cylinder into her hand. "The answer, of course, is no. I do know Doctor Lange as I have stated to you. Quite well and quite personally. Which is why I was precluded by the Bajoran Council from the screening, as quite obviously they were already aware. That is a copy of a recent communication from Janice."

"A love letter?" Garak brightened. "Really."

"No, it's not a love letter," Bashir denied. "Calling Jadzia's bluff shouldn't require I disclose intimate details of our relationship."

"Oh?" Quark's nasal voice interjected from above their heads. "Why not? I've got to get something for my time -- And space," he leaned over, barbed wit and calculator ready. "If anyone is following my drift? I don't usually charge by the hour, but I think I'm going to be making an exception in this case."

"We will be ordering," Bashir crossed his heart, "as soon as the Captain and Kira are here."

"Uh, huh," Quark was not so easily swayed by charm or boyish good looks. "And you are anticipating soon to be?"

"Around the time the Bajoran Council of Ministers makes its decision regarding Chief O'Brien's assistant," Garak offered.

"I think I came in on that part," Quark sneered, far more interested than they believed he looked.

"No," Garak cooed in correction, "you came in on the part about Julian's love affair with the Bajoran representative Doctor Lange."

"That was it," Quark snapped his fingers. "Love affair, huh? Should I be shocked? Or just pretend to be?"

"Whichever suits you," Garak borrowed Julian's message cylinder from Dax. "It's all right here."

"A hologram program?" Quark peered at in disgust. "Big deal. If he wants to call her Janice, let him. He's an adult."

"No, it's not a hologram program," Bashir snatched his cylinder away. "Anymore than it's a love letter to myself. Janice is quite Human, the same as I am, and we had a relationship, yes. Twelve years ago when we were both still in medical school."

"Uh, huh," Quark said. "And someone is having trouble with this?"

"Trouble?" Bashir replied. "Well, no. The only trouble anyone's having is for some reason no one believes me. They all seem to think it's some sort of pathetic attempt on my part to explain away why I was overlooked by the Bajoran Council of Ministers in lieu of the Chief."

"Reason being?" Quark looked around the table.

"Well," Bashir supposed, "reason being to my understanding is they all claim I've never mentioned Janice before now, which is simply not true. Granted, I may never have had a heart to heart talk with anyone about Janice, but I'm quite sure I have mentioned her. It doesn't make any sense that I wouldn't have. We have kept in touch. Hello on each other's birthday. That sort of thing."

"Uh, huh," Quark was following him. "Is she attractive?"

"Janice?" Bashir frowned. "Well, yes, she was certainly quite attractive at the time I knew her. I really can't attest to now. But then we haven't seen each other in -- oh, seven or eight years? People do change."

"That they do. I believe it."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I believe it. If anyone has any doubts, I believe it." He waddled away.

"Oh," Bashir said. "Oh, well, there you have it," he smiled, "Quark believes me."

"That's quite a witness," Dax agreed.

"It's also quite a letter," Bashir set the message aside with a wink. "From quite a woman."

Worf huffed. "If this Doctor Lange is a friend, is there a reason why you are now mocking her?"

"Because he's a cad," O'Brien assured with a whistle and a wave for Quark. "Excuse me, but I have to eat -- some of us do have some work to do."

"Actually, yes, we do," Dax admitted. "Worf and I really should order now also. Benjamin and Kira must have been delayed with Odo."

"Be still my heart," Quark thrust a menu down in front of her. "Twenty-five percent gratuity is the acceptable standard, and there's a per person minimum after seven o'clock for parties larger than six so don't even bother looking at the specials."

"Where's it say that?" O'Brien borrowed the menu.

"Read the fine print."

"It's in Ferengi."

"That's your problem."

"Or yours," Bashir quipped. "There's only five of us."

"Better men then you have tried better lines than that one," Quark promised with an eye on Odo moving up to join the group. "Eight months after the occupation I've still got three months worth of IOUs to make up for -- and here I thought the Klingons were cheap."

"Klingons are not cheap," Worf huffed, "your prices reek of extortion."

"Give it a week," Quark ogled Odo. "No freeloaders. You don't eat, you don't sit unless you pay anyway."

"Yes, well, I don't eat," Odo drawled.

"But if I were you I'd reconsider that part about not sitting," Dax hinted.

"Not that that's meant as any form of extortion," Sisko appeared with Kira to take the menu from O'Brien with a twinkle. "Ah. I've been looking forward to this -- "

"Barbecued spare ribs," Quark took the menu back.

"Hot. Spicy…" Sisko rubbed his hands together in animated glee.

"Until your senses are flaming," Quark knew the drill.

"Or at least your sinuses," Kira took the menu.

"Look who's talking Bajoran and cuisine in the same sentence," Quark took the menu back. "I've seen less tears at a funeral and smelled better breath on a -- " he eyed Worf. "Targ."

"Yes, well…" Bashir raised his hand as Quark turned away to collect the libations.

"I've got it covered. He wants ribs. She wants heartburn. He wants lamb. These two want to gagh together. He wants anything that smells like fish. And this other one over here wants air."

"Yes, and?" Bashir said.

"And Julian will have anything that makes an impression," Dax nodded.

"What she said." 

"Right?" O'Brien joked. "And probably ten percent higher in cost then the rest of us peasants."

"At least," Dax smiled at Bashir.

"Yes, well, actually, I'm not quite sure what would make an impression put alongside indigestion, worms and air," he admitted.

"Oh, I don't know about that…" Dax picked up his discarded message cylinder. "A love affair with the Bajoran representative just might -- May I?"

"A what?" Kira paused in refusing a glass of wine from Quark. "No, I want a cup of raktajino."

Quark sighed. "Is there ever a day you're not difficult? It's wine. Not poison. Wine. Civilized people drink wine with their meals -- Okay, I'll get the coffee."

"I don't know about difficult…" Garak ogled Kira interested. "Just a little late in the day, perhaps?"

"Trust me, I need it."

"Really?" Garak's brow arched intrigued. "Meaning? You've either not yet heard from the Federation or the Bajoran Council, or you have?"

"Oh, no, we have," Sisko's grin blossomed. "And, yes, Major Kira has been approved to assist the Bajoran representative."

"Really," Garak beamed. "I know that must be a great relief off of your mind."

"To an extent, yes," Sisko was smiling distinctly amused and interested at Bashir. "However, I must admit I'm a little curious myself -- did Dax just say something about a love affair with the Bajoran representative?"

"Doctor Lange," Garak dismissed, "yes. Apparently the UFP considered Julian's personal life far more significant than Chief O'Brien's past experiences in the Federation-Cardassian wars -- please, Captain, don't keep us in suspense. I know the Chief is quite anxious to know -- "

"Oh, yes," O'Brien supported, "he's just dying."

"A slight exaggeration," Garak assured.

"Don't be too sure," O'Brien warned Sisko. "Common sense hasn't exactly prevailed. So, yes, let's have it. What pinhead's been assigned to assist me?"

"Me," Sisko's grin flashed broadly.

"Oh," O'Brien said as half of the group broke out in titters.

"Open mouth, insert this," Quark handed O'Brien a glass of Bajoran ale.

"Not a bad idea," O'Brien toasted Sisko. "No offense."

"None taken," Sisko promised.

"But only because common sense hasn't exactly prevailed," Dax patted Sisko's hand. "What changed their minds? It couldn't have been a subtle reminder from you just whose station this is?"

"How did you guess?" Sisko's grin turned on her.

"Because I know you. And you have the patience of a Saint -- up to a point."

"Well, I don't know about that," Bashir lifted his wine in preparation of a real toast. "Fourteen hours before the conference is scheduled to begin seems pretty patient to me."

"Yes," Worf upheld. "Ideally though, the Federation representative should have been Jadzia."

"No offense," Bashir winked O'Brien.

"None taken," O'Brien assured Dax as their glasses clinked. "But only because I happen to agree."

"Well," Dax offered, "personally I think between you, Benjamin and Kira, the Cardassian government doesn't stand a chance with -- whatever it is they're actually up to," she shrugged to Kira.

"No, they don't." Kira's eye was on Quark. "Raktajino?"

"Speaking of patience," he countered.

"As well as no offense," Garak preempted Bashir. "None taken I can assure you."

"But only because he knows you're right," O'Brien chuckled.

"So I do," Garak purred easily, hardly blind to his own race. "I highly doubt Emperor Damar's sudden interest in the Bajoran-Cardassian orphan situation is wrought from guilt."

"No," Sisko agreed somberly. "I'm glad you're here, Mister Garak -- "

"Why?" Garak's familiar smug glint fixed itself on him. "Surely you're not going to suggest Damar has had a change of heart and is going to be joining us after all?"

"I was explaining how some of this came about," O'Brien offered to Sisko's glance. "Didn't think it was in violation of any_ rule."_

"As of 0900 tomorrow, Chief," Sisko verified. "Under no circumstances can any of the proceedings be discussed with anyone other than your designated assistant."

"Got it. Not that there's going to be that much to discuss."

"That will depend, of course," Sisko settled back on Garak, "on what Legate Damar intends to present."

"I see," Garak said tightly. "Not exactly the answer I preferred to hear."

"By way of his representatives," Sisko inclined his head. "Though, yes, Damar will be here throughout the conference."

"And you naturally want a guarantee of no trouble," Garak picked up his wine with a smile. "Well, trouble, Captain, unfortunately, could very well be largely a matter of opinion. From my point of view, I could be doing Cardassia a great service by executing our Emperor."

"As well as a great disservice to yourself," Sisko suggested.

"Again," Garak's smile remained, "largely a matter of opinion."

"I'll make it an order, if I have."

"Except you can't," Garak drained his wine. "I am a private citizen. The only recourse available to you is to arrest me -- after the fact. And only if someone complains."

"Garak…" Major Kira inclined forward in a surprising and extraordinary touching expression of sympathy.

"Extraordinary and equally ineffective," Garak advised her. "Not to be cold, Major, but I must say I find it interesting that you are so unaffected by Mister Damar's visit."

"I'm not unaffected. I'd give anything to have Damar never make it through that airlock alive. But I can't," she apologized. "I'm sorry, but I can't. Because I also have a duty and responsibility to Benjamin. To Shakaar -- "

"And what about your duty to Ziyal?" Garak injected. "Sworn duty, I seem to recall. The entire point of having Ziyal live here on the station was for her own protection. To ensure her the opportunity to have a life. Instead, the delightful child was brutally murdered by Damar -- for sheer political greed, I am convinced. The same as I am convinced Damar never would have dared if Ziyal wasn't half Bajoran, which, of course, she was. Thanks to that delightful character of a father."

"And Ziyal," Kira agreed. "Especially Ziyal. So do you. Killing Damar isn't going to bring Ziyal back to life."

"Odd," Garak's thin smile returned, "but if I didn't know you better, Major, I'd say you sound as if you almost believe Damar's claims of improving the standard of life among those hundreds of thousands unfortunate enough to find themselves in Ziyal's position."

"I believe we can beat Damar at his own game. I believe, yes, the same as Benjamin, perhaps some good can come out of this."

"Good?" Garak's challenge was a short laugh. "What sort of good are you referring to? To the more liberal of my constituents who likewise believe in these sorts of fairy tales, Shakaar's refusal to attend the conference is a slap in the face. Not one to be remembered with fondness. Only one to be overlooked for the moment. But then Damar's game for the time being, Major," he promised, "is an effort to obtain a license to spy. His proposed Consulate will be nothing more than a legalized Intelligence operation -- to be used against Bajor. Certainly not for her. You can't possibly be that naïve."

"Do you know that for a fact?" Julian questioned him, ever the liberal, no matter how foolishly.

"Of course I know it for a fact," Garak accepted a refill from Quark. "So does Captain Sisko…As does Captain Sisko," he toasted Sisko, "know he can't begin to insure Damar's safety aboard a station the size of this one. Anymore than he can insure the safety of anyone associated with the conference. Terrorists come in all shapes and sizes, as well as races."

"So they do," Sisko said. "I want your word, Garak."

"That I will not be among their staggering numbers? That the bomb you hear exploding in Damar's quarters, was not planted by me? Fine. You have it. No bomb, Captain. No phaser. No weapon of any sort. Just wishful thinking and hopeful prayer that Damar gets exactly what he deserves."

"I'll certainly support that," Bashir agreed. "At least the part about wishful thinking and hopeful prayer. What are you planning to do as far as personal security? Fair to say however unaware everyone might be as of today, by 0900 tomorrow morning that will have changed dramatically."

"So it will have," Sisko turned to Dax. "I've ordered you assigned to head up the security for the Bajoran representative and Kira."

"Me?" Dax was understandably surprised.

"I'll also support that," Bashir likewise contributed with a startled blink. "I would have thought nothing short of divorce would make Jadzia acceptable, and it would be a question even then -- On the basis of past associations," he grinned at her. "Highly regarded or not, Curzon was the Ambassador to the Klingon Empire."

"I don't give a damn what anyone considers acceptable," Sisko corrected.

"More of 'this is my station'," Dax's smile was understanding.

"So it is," Sisko turned to Worf. "You're assigned to head the security for Chief O'Brien and myself."

"As far as Emperor Damar and his team," Odo put in, "we've agreed to one personal assistant beyond the two conference representatives. The rest of the security staff will be Bajoran."

"Bajoran?" Bashir choked.

"Bajoran," Sisko said. "Therefore, if any of you see a Federation security uniform within fifty feet of you -- I suggest you duck."

"He's joking," Bashir promised Dax.

"I'm not so sure," Dax studied Benjamin.

"Well," Bashir supposed then, "as long as no one _borrows_ a Bajoran security uniform, we should be all set."

"Security is being provided jointly by Starfleet and Bajoran Special Forces on loan from the Bajoran military, in all seriousness, Doctor," Sisko smiled. "The uniform is Bajoran, and distinct to the occasion."

"Meaning you can't miss it," Kira offered. "It's bright yellow."

"_Bright_ yellow?" Dax winced, thinking of the vibrant, sweeping line of violet Trill markings adorning her hairline and neck.

"Why?" Kira said. "You'll look fine."

"I'll hold you to that tomorrow," Dax nodded back.

"Yes," Worf was pensive. "Yellow would not be my first choice either."

"I don't know why not," Bashir grinned. "Jadzia's concern for her appearance is one thing. A seven foot Klingon canary is something else entirely."

"A little too something else," O'Brien was laughing to the point of coughing.

"You'll also be required to wear one, Doctor," Sisko enlightened Bashir.

"To blend in?" O'Brien gasped. "Or to assist in blinding the Maquis?"

"Oh, I would extend my concerns far beyond a resurgence of the Maquis," Garak cautioned. "The Bajoran-Cardassian issue lies very close to the hearts of the Bajoran world as a whole. It would be a lie to say otherwise."

"So it would be," Sisko was back to eyeing Bashir. "A love affair?"

"What?"

"Doctor Janice Lange," Sisko prompted. "I had no idea."

"Oh," Bashir said. "Well, you won't be opening any old wounds, if that's a concern. Janice and I are quite good friends -- Or at least we parted friends," he smiled. "Who knows. She may decide otherwise and not even bother to speak to me."

"I can't imagine why," Sisko admitted.

"Neither can I," Bashir confided, borrowing his message cylinder back from Dax. "I wouldn't go as far as saying we ever discussed marriage…."

"Really," Sisko shook his head. "I truly had no idea."

"Neither did the rest of the Federation, the Cardassians or the Bajorans," O'Brien assured. "Face it, Julian, the better man was chosen for the job."

"Better man?" Sisko requested.

Worf sighed. "Doctor Bashir has decided his love affair precluded him from being an acceptable candidate for the position of Federation Consular representative."

"I see." Sisko believed he understood. "And, yes, it would have."

"If anyone was aware," O'Brien pointed out.

"Which, yes, someone may have been," Sisko agreed. "I simply meant it was not something that was brought to my attention."

"By the Federation, Cardassians, or the Bajorans," O'Brien nodded.

"No," Sisko smiled at Bashir for no reason other than he just smiled.

"Oh, well, it was quite a while ago, Captain," Garak hurried to offer in unnecessary defense of Julian. "Oh, yes, long before Julian came to us. The same as it is entirely possible Doctor Lange brought the point to the attention of the Bajoran Council of Ministers herself in her own initial screening. Very likely just as a matter of a routine listing of Federation associations, past or current."

"_Long _before?" Sisko's head was turning from Bashir to Kira frowning.

"Yes," Bashir said. "Twelve years as a matter of fact since our relationship. Why? Should it have made a difference to the Bajoran Counsel's decision?"

"Yes, well, notwithstanding Shakaar's potential interest in his representative's past and present Federation affiliations," Odo grunted. "Why just might be Doctor Lange is twenty-four years old. Twelve years ago she would have been twelve years old -- if I have your Federation calendar right."

"Twelve -- " The color drained from Bashir's face.

"Excuse me?" O'Brien's glass paused halfway to his lips.

"So much for those after school baby-sitting jobs." Kira picked up her coffee, satisfied the morals of her home world's representative weren't the only ones in question.

"No kidding," O'Brien said. "Excuse me? Twelve years old? Twelve _Federation _years old?"

"Oh, but -- " Bashir stammered.

"I should say," Garak was blinking at him. "Certainly, Julian, few cultures would find that to be acceptable, that's very true."

"It's disgusting," Quark snorted. "If not in poor taste." 

"If not possibly still within the Federation's statute requirements for prosecution," Odo assured.

"Prosecution…" Bashir echoed.

"We'll have to check them, Constable," Sisko nodded.

"Check?" Bashir swallowed. "Oh, but that's absurd. I mean obviously -- "

"Obviously Julian must have confused Shakaar's Doctor Lange with a different Doctor Lange," Dax generously extended Benjamin Bashir's message cylinder.

"Her grandmother," O'Brien chuckled.

"Yes, quite obviously I have," Bashir stared at the cylinder. "I'm not so sure about her grandmother…I mean, you can't be serious…Truthfully," he stared at Sisko, "you can't possibly think -- "

"I don't know what to think," Sisko admitted. "We'll have to see."

"See?" Bashir repeated. "See what?"

"If she recognizes you, of course, Julian," Garak said.

"As in identifies you," the Chief chortled.

"Or if she ignores you," Worf huffed. "I am confused. Are you now saying you have no idea who this woman is?"

"Yes, I am saying that," Bashir nodded. "I am definitely saying that. The Janice Lange I know -- Or knew -- " he shook his head. 

"Twenty-four years old?" O'Brien suddenly peered at Sisko. "Wait a minute. Are you telling me I'm going to be sitting across the table from some snot-nosed kid?"

"Three kids," Sisko's eyes twinkled. "Doctor Lange, Gul Dukat and his younger brother."

"Give me a beer," O'Brien thrust his glass at Quark. "Make it a real one. None of this watered down Bajoran synthale."

"Chief?" Sisko reminded an open mind likewise would require a clear mind less than fourteen hours from then and counting.

"I've got twenty-four years of service under my belt -- _more_ than twenty-four years," O'Brien pointed. "The last thing I need is to be under the gun of a bunch of kids who know everything and don't know anything…" he trailed off.

"_Gul Dukat_?" Garak filled in the blank quite nicely.

"I'm with you," Quark downed O'Brien's ale.

"Anon Dukat," Sisko informed his captivated audience. "Dukat's eldest son who yes, also happens to be approximately twenty-four years old -- if anyone's thinking of claiming to have had a love affair with him," his smile settled back on Bashir.

Bashir groaned. "I never _claimed_ to have an affair with anyone."

"Words to the wise, Doctor," Sisko submitted, choosing to remain neutral himself, both as far as the subject matter, and Bashir's potential motives. Ones he suspected had more to do with Dax than feeling slighted by the Federation or the Bajoran Council of Ministers. But then Bashir not only had a tendency to wear his heart on his sleeve, he also had a tendency to wear his ego. And Dax's marriage to Worf had been a distinct bruise to his ego, whether or not it truly affected his heart. "There's an old Earth saying I'm sure you have heard. 'Loose lips sink ships.' Mind what you say, in other words. Lest you find yourself speaking out of turn to someone's detriment, including your own."

The Captain was right, of course, in what he was saying and/or thinking. Bashir looked back at Sisko. Including that part about him being madly in love with Dax, if he was capable of being madly in love with anyone. Who knew; certainly not him. Frustrated and actually angry over her relationship with Worf one moment, he was equally disinterested and carefree about it the next. Teasing her about the potential for rekindling some long-lost relationship of his seemed like a good idea at the time he thought of it. A fair way of getting even for the occasional turmoil she persisted in invoking in him; it still seemed like a good and fair idea. 

"Understood," Bashir picked up his wine in smiling agreement with Sisko. "On the other hand, however in error I obviously was in assuming a reunion with a former classmate of mine, I trust there's no objection to my making the acquaintance of this Doctor Janice Lange? Particularly since at age twenty-four, she's now of legal age?"

The Chief's last supper, as he had jokingly dubbed the gathering, was interrupted at that point, preempting Sisko's response with a call for him over his com badge by a security officer at one of the main docking bays.

__

"Captain?" The Lieutenant's voice rang clearly. _"I have a Doctor Janice Lange who's just arrived by the local Bajoran shuttle. She's looking for -- "_ The officer's hesitation and confusion was equally clear. _"The Cardassian conference?"_

"Lange…" Kira startled. "What's he talking about? She's not supposed to be here…"

Sisko's uplifted hand stopped her to address the waiting security officer. "Thank you, Lieutenant. Major Kira and Commander Dax will be right there. Sisko out."

"Well," Dax stood up as Sisko signed off, "I hope no one minds that I'm in blue."

"It'll have to do," Sisko's nose wrinkled in reassurance. "Oh, and, Major?" he stopped Kira with a silent, pointed look of how diplomacy went a long, long way.

"I know," she got the message behind the look. "I would have been more surprised if it started out smoothly."

"Yes," Sisko nodded. "Yes."

CHAPTER SIX

"So?" Legate Damar, Gul Dukat's one time Lieutenant, turned Ruler of Cardassia in his former Emperor's unavoidable absence, irritably tossed the notice of Sisko's and Kira's respective appointments back towards the officer who brought it, a heavy scowl creasing his prominent face. "What do I care? Eh?" He rose from his slumped position under the watchful eye of his assistant to clap his hand around the shoulder of young Gul Dukat dutifully studying his Emperor's proposal as they sat in the commissary aboard their battle cruiser en route to Deep Space Nine, Dukat's brother Pfrann bristling immediately in apprehension as the hand touched his elder's shoulder.

"Do you care?" Damar ignored the nervous child to flash a facetious smile over Dukat ignoring him as always.

Anon continued to ignore Damar to Pfrann's mixed feelings of concern and relief. Finishing his study of the page he was reading he rose to his feet, Pfrann immediately falling in step next to him.

"Dukat," Damar forestalled the defiant exit.

It was a long moment before Anon consented to turning back around, expressionless and silent in his stance.

"If you could," Damar's thick neck swayed forward in a movement reminiscent of Dukat the father, the voice laden with stark, glib sarcasm, "see to _pretend_ your obedience, you'll find it most appreciated."

"I didn't punch him," Anon remarked finally in the turbolift with his brother.

"Why would you even think to punch him?" Pfrann groaned.

"Because I don't like him," Anon shrugged.

"It is not your position to like or dislike him. Anon!" Pfrann's hand went to his head, exhausted and confused by more than why they were even here.

"What you confuse is blindness with love," Anon reminded. "I don't have to be our father to honor him, or bring him justice. Walk in his footsteps of these constant games and you'll make yourself dizzy. I don't have the time."

"No!" Pfrann refused. "No, _you_ abuse his memory with your arrogance! You mock him!"

"Abuse," Anon scoffed. "I don't abuse anything Dukat didn't abuse himself."

"That is a lie!" Pfrann grabbed at him in fury.

"No, it isn't a lie!" Anon pushed him away with a snap. "The same as it is a fact that regardless of Emperor Dukat's motives, his views, his personal quests, he was right! No one can deny that. The Klingons were destroying the Union. They had to be stopped! The Dominion was a chance. The Romulans. _Not_ the Federation whose boots Damar bends to lick to secure his own position, not Cardassia's! The UFP will do nothing to assist us, as they did nothing throughout the Klingon war. We must infuse power back into ourselves as our father attempted to do.

"But we must do it this time," he shook the data padd at his brother. "Not play games with fifty year old grandfathers no one cares anything about. We must redefine the Union. Prevent a new civilian revolt which will only weaken us further -- again! When we need to grow strong!"

"Anon!" Pfrann grabbed his wrist.

"Not waste our time seeking revenge on a world of monks too arrogant to bow their heads," Anon insisted. "Our father had to be out of his mind to threaten the Federation with the Dominion at his side only five minutes!"

"But this _is_ an Intelligence network," Pfrann snatched the padd from his hand. "If we are to protect ourselves from a renewed Klingon threat, the Federation is our best source of information. They tell the Bajorans everything!"

"Who Dukat should have threatened was Gowron," Anon spit the Klingon Chancellor's name coldly. "Demanded the immediate release of all occupied territories, or the home world attacked would be Qo'noS, not Bajor. What could the Federation have said to him? _No? _You have to continue to allow the Klingons to annex your space? From the Neutral Worlds, to the Ferengi Alliance, to their own delegates -- to _Bajor_, they would have turned from staring at Legate Dukat to staring at the UFP."

"Anon!" Pfrann insisted.

"I didn't say it wasn't a good idea," Anon snatched the padd back. "I said the issue of the Bajoran-Cardassian population is self-explanatory by their existence. We don't have to spend a week dancing like fools to justify our petition. They are our people. We want a Consult on their world. Two sentences, Pfrann! Not a data bank!" he flung the padd across the lift. "They can't deny them a voice in their own government. Representatives in the Council. Force them to chose between one world or another. Not the Federation or Bajor. Attempt to and they are in violation of their own articles. Organize them, and the new uprising will be on Bajor, not Cardassia Prime!"

"Is that why you agreed to represent Damar's proposal?" Pfrann stared at him in revelation.

"I agreed," Anon heaved a breath, "because I like to watch Damar make a fool out of himself. I like the looks when I and you walk across the Council floor. We are reminders. We are memories….We are!" he seethed, "Dukat! Damar is nothing but the man who follows behind Dukat's footsteps, in his footsteps, because he has no idea how to make his own! The tool he seeks to use is the tool he needs and it is Dukat. The voice that speaks. The face you see…"

The face he saw was his father's, his brother's. One older, one so much younger. Gaunt. Sharp. Angular. Mocking when it wanted to be. Glib. Sneering. Vicious. Afraid. Whatever it wanted to be. Thought it needed to be. Fearful that it had to be. They were one and the same. Physically and emotionally, and so oblivious to just employing common sense in so many ways.

"Yes, Pfrann," Anon nodded, "if we are to protect ourselves against a renewed Klingon threat we need to reestablish our Intelligence networks now. And the Federation is a reliable source who tells the Bajorans everything. The Cardassian-Bajoran orphans are perfect. They are not all fifty year old grandfathers with children of their own having children. Some of them are six. Some of them are two. Some of them are being born as we speak. Ignorant. Suppressed. Denied. We are there to relieve, not coddle them. We are there to uphold, not support them -- We are there!" he seized Pfrann, "to install an Intelligence cell which we will do! Damn the Federation, Shakaar and this Kira Nerys!"

"Do you even realize who Kira Nerys is?" Pfrann ventured cautiously.

The question provoked silence.

"Anon?" he said as Anon released him to collect his data padd from the floor.

"Yes, of course, I realize who she is," Anon fingered the padd. "I pay attention even if you don't think I do."

"I can never tell with you," Pfrann shook his head.

"The same as I realize I am more interested in Captain Sisko than some concubine of Legate Dukat," Anon straightened up to recast a smile in his brother's direction. "And of the terror that must have reverberated through the Federation Assembly when they found out the Cardassian representatives bore the name Dukat. We are significant enough that they would in moments cast aside Shakaar's insistent of unbiased arbitration that they have staunchly upheld for three months and _insist_ we participate. Damar is nothing. I say it. You say it. And now the Federation is saying it. They are terrified of us. Thinking what we might do. What we could do. They want to know everything that is in our minds today, and what might enter our minds tomorrow. You call it abuse when I accept the power bestowed on us by others in our father's name. You call it denial when I reject his shadow. Make up your mind, Pfrann, you can't have it both ways."

"I bear his curse of indecisiveness," Pfrann acknowledged.

"Only if you want to," Anon promised. "With Sisko there the Federation representative is nothing more than a puppet. The conference is now between us and the Federation. _Us_, Pfrann. Which is what we want because we are Cardassia. In control, not out of control. Our presentation firm, decisive. Emphatic, not sarcastic. Damar, like an idiot willing cast himself in the background, where he will be lost. Where he will stay lost. Yes, I know who Kira Nerys is. A desperate attempt to re-equalize the footing Shakaar lost when he declined Damar's invitation, sending some stupid Neutral in his place….It's perfect, Pfrann," he exited the lift to stride across the bridge of his battle cruiser and assume command. "I really can't see how much more perfect it could get -- ETA to Terok Nor?"

"Thirty minutes," his helm reported. "Still no sign of any Federation patrol."

"See what I mean?" Anon grinned up at his brother. "Send a transmission we will be requesting permission to dock."

"We are several hours early," Pfrann reminded. "They may deny it."

"Bullshit," Anon scoffed, confident. "Sisko finds his seat in our father's office too comfortable to leave the sons of Legate Dukat hovering around the station in a battle cruiser with nothing but time on their hands. He'd rather have us in his nest as quickly as possible where he can watch us."

"Kira Nerys?" Shakaar's representative was an attractive young woman overflowing with vibrancy, dressed in a simple understated tunic of beige cloth, hearty smile, emerald green eyes -- and the biggest head full of snarled and mottled brown hair Dax had ever seen on a Human in her life.

"What?" Kira's face contorted.

"Sorry," Dax winced in whispered apology as Kira's expression of bewilderment moved from staring at her hand being vigorously pumped up and down to staring up at Dax.

"Yes, I'm Major Kira Nerys," Kira gave up on Dax to focus on…

"Janice Lange," Janice turned her warm and generous smile from Kira to Dax. "You must be Jadzia Dax. Adon told me to expect you."

"Well, _Adon_ is one up on me," Kira muttered under her breath. Not that she meant to be catty, or to infer Doctor Lange's suggestion of familiarity by her use of First Minister Shakaar Adon of Bajor's first name might tug at her heart strings.

Anymore than Dax had meant to be catty about the doctor's eye-catching impersonation of a wide-eyed homeless waif that wasn't eye-catching, except to possibly a man.Most men. Klingons included. "Lt. Commander Jadzia Dax, yes," Dax smiled in return with an added witty hint. "But you don't really see me. I'm not really here."

"Oh, but you are here," Janice laughed. "I can see you."

"Yes…" Dax's look at Kira was blatant that time. Her unspoken message clear. Doctor Janice Lange either had her own healthy sense of humor to go with her healthy smile or she was a Dabo hostess in disguise. The choice was Kira's.

Kira chose to clear her throat rather briskly, her innate Bajoran reserve around strangers piqued and mildly flustered by the outgoing young woman…

With the biggest head full of hair Kira had ever seen on a Human in her life. Kira stared briefly at the massive, long brown mane heavily streaked with stripes of gold before she just shook her head and refocused on Doctor Janice Lange the person, not the hair, who was not supposed to be there never mind Dax.

Kira frowned. "You're early."

"I am?" Janice said. "Oh, well, that explains it," she smiled at her newly acquired dear friend Tom, better known to Kira and Dax as security officer Lieutenant Jacobs, standing there with a stupefied grin on his face.

"Well, of course it explains it," Kira gestured impatiently back toward the airlock. "Adon -- First Minister Shakaar," she immediately checked her own familiarity to fairly accuse Lange of attempted espionage, "was supposed to provide priority escort. You were supposed to arrive by escort tomorrow morning. Not by -- by -- "

"Local passenger shuttle," Dax volunteered, "tonight."

"Oh," Janice smiled.

And that was all she smiled. Or said. Dax had her suspicions if she and Kira chose to stand there for forty-five minutes that was all Doctor Janice Lange would have smiled. Or said as far as arriving twelve hours early by local shuttle.

Kira huffed. "Didn't Shakaar explain -- arrange all of this?" 

"No," Janice shook her head. "He just pointed me in the direction of the shuttle port and -- wait a minute," she paused to think about it for a moment. "Maybe I did misunderstand. Because yes, he also mentioned something about a restaurant, but I was just thinking I could always eat when I arrived here…"

"Never mind," Kira settled the matter with a decisive slice of her hand through the air. "It's not important. What is important…" she took a deep breath, "is you're here. Yes, you're here," she broke into her own warm and welcoming smile with a warm and welcoming grasp of Doctor Lange's hand.

That she promptly proceeded to shake. Dax turned away with a wince.

"Yes, I'm Kira Nerys," Kira assured, "and this is Jadzia Dax, and we would both like to officially welcome you to Deep Space Nine."

"I guess so," Janice laughed.

"What?" Kira said through her glued and fixed smile that she knew was glued and fixed.

"We just did all of this," Janice nodded at her hand.

"Oh," Kira glanced down. "Oh, well, we're all just a little excited," she went on to dismiss, casually that time with another wave.

"Oh, yes, it is very exciting," Janice exuded her support of Kira's enthusiasm. "Could one of you do me a really big favor?"

"Anything," Kira swore. "Anything at all."

"Where can I find a toilet?" Janice whispered, slightly embarrassed.

"A what?" Kira's smile slackened.

"There were these two little twins on the shuttle," Janice confided. "The cutest little girls -- "

"That way," Kira interrupted to point. "Yes, that way."

"Thank you." Janice gratefully hurried off, leaving Kira and Dax free to mull over a few things.

"A toilet," Kira said. "She asked for a toilet."

"Yes," Dax nodded.

"She's twelve hours early and she asks for a toilet!" Kira gestured in disbelief. "Why didn't she just use the toilet on the shuttle?"

"Probably something to do with the two adorable little twins," Dax nodded.

"What?" Kira said.

"Maybe they were sick?" Dax shrugged.

"Sick," Kira said. "Sick," she looked down at the two enormous canvas duffels Lange had she left behind. "She called him Adon," she admitted finally, studying the luggage with a concentrated frown on her face alongside Dax studying the luggage with her hands clasped behind her back, her expression a blend of relaxation and mildly pensive thought.

"Yes, she did," Dax agreed with Kira's notice.

"Not that I care she called him Adon," Kira assured how she didn't care. Her year long personal relationship with Shakaar had ended amicably well over a year ago.

"No, of course you don't," Dax agreed.

"Of course I don't," Kira descended on the duffels to give one of them a hard yank. It didn't move. "What does she have in here?" She returned to frowning at the luggage that had to weigh several kilos more than she did.

"I wouldn't think clothes," Dax agreed.

"Clothes?" Kira said.

"She seems somewhat natural," Dax referenced Lange's simple beige tunic with its matching cloth hose dangling freely from its short hem line; her feet comfortable in flat, cloth slippers.

"Well, she's young," Kira shrugged.

"Very young," Dax nodded.

"Poised though," Kira extended. "Confident."

"Though I wouldn't necessarily go as far as saying relaxed," Dax considered.

"No, neither would I," Kira assured.

They fell into silence again briefly until Kira gestured in a general reference to her hair. "What's all that…"

"Yellow?" Dax smiled. "I'm not sure. Cosmetic, I would imagine."

"Cosmetic," Kira thought about that as well as the snarled mane that would break a steel comb if it had ever seen a comb.

"Worf will love it," Dax acknowledged wistfully.

"Worf," Kira snorted. "I can just see Bashir."

"And the Chief," Dax nodded.

"Quark," Kira assured.

"Benjamin?" Dax frowned just slightly.

"No," they both decided. Benjamin Sisko was a very solid man. Sober-minded and sensible.

"So's Worf," Kira reminded.

"True," Dax agreed.

"And the Chief is really also," Kira felt.

"Yes," Dax believed so too.

"Actually," Kira rolled her eyes, "the only one we really have to be concerned about -- "

"Is Julian," Dax reached down to swing one of the duffel's over her shoulder. "Rocks, maybe?"

"I was thinking souvenirs."

"From the Council of Ministers?" Dax grinned. "Or the Bajoran National Treasury?"

"You're security," Kira waved.

"True."

"All right, fine," Kira surrendered. "We won't look, we'll ask first, and then we'll look."

"Sounds fair," Dax considered. "After all we can't start out blatantly accusing…" she eyed Kira attacking the second duffel.

"In another life, maybe. I don't have time to be fair," Kira briskly flipped open the duffel to reveal an extensive collection of data. "The Bajoran-Cardassian Peace Accord?"

"Reference material?" Dax surmised.

"Well, I know Bareil was prolific," Kira tentatively admitted. "Wait a minute…" she dug through the duffel Dax was holding, ultimately surrendering in exasperation. "She has a whole Library here! From the Prophets to the First Hebitian Society to Vulcan's first contact with the Federation!" She tossed that one back in with disgust.

"You know what's worst of all?" Dax said.

"She seems pleasant enough," Kira sighed.

"Yes. I have a feeling she is. Though I'm not quite sure what that means as far as her capabilities."

"Or if it means anything at all." Kira tried not to think about what might have swayed Shakaar's decision if it wasn't Lange's diplomatic skills.

"We'll find out," Dax smiled in the direction of Janice on a fast pace back to them.

"Oh, for goodness sake," Janice laughed to Dax standing there weighted down by the combined Libraries of three worlds, "you can't lift that."

"Oh, but I did lift it," Dax twinkled back. "As you can see."

"Yes, I guess that's true. You're certainly much stronger than I am…" Janice expression of merriment included Kira standing there with the strap of the second duffel in her hand like she was getting ready to take it for a walk. "I just usually drag them."

"I was just waiting…" Kira explained.

"I don't blame you," Janice grabbed for the strap. "I wouldn't have bothered except I wasn't quite sure of the data facilities available…"

"Extensive," Kira gave her a hand with tugging her duffel along. "Yes, we have an extensive Library of data -- "

"Even on worlds outside of the Federation?"

"Well, yes," Kira hesitated, not quite sure if Lange was making a point or just asking a question. "DS9 is a Bajoran station, not Federation. And it does pride itself on being a gateway between Bajoran and Federation space. As well as the Gamma Quadrant, Cardassia -- "

"Yes," Janice nodded, "I understand from Adon the station played a very significant role throughout the Dominion-Federation War, as well as the Cardassian-Klingon Conflict."

"Yes, well, unfortunately, the station's strategic -- "

"Strategic," Janice stopped with a distant smile. "Wouldn't it be wonderful if the station's strategic location mandated it be a gateway between Bajoran and Federation Space? As well as the Gamma Quadrant and Cardassia for the purpose of science and exploration? Commerce and trade?"

"In whose lifetime?" Kira's reply was curt. "No, I'm sorry," she apologized a moment later. "I shouldn't have said it that way."

"You don't believe Legate Damar is sincere in his proposal, do you?" Janice nor her smile were offended.

"No," Kira answered honestly. "But it's not my place to comment on Legate Damar, or his proposal. I'm simply here as an advisor on the Prophets' teachings -- or Bareil's principles," she indicated the luggage. "If you have any questions…"

"Oh, yes, I understand from Adon you knew Vedek Bareil personally. How wonderful for you."

"Yes," Kira nodded. "Yes, it was wonderful."

"But, I didn't know…" Janice frowned.

"That Kira had been appointed as your assistant advisor?" Dax suggested. "Even though Shakaar told you to expect us?"

"Well, no," Janice laughed. "How did you guess?"

"Because the Federation's decision just came through while you were en route."

"No!" Janice gasped in open-mouthed wonder.

"Yes!" Dax assured in equal animation.

"Why?" Kira just said.

"Why?" Janice blinked. "Because you're perfect!"

"Perfect?"

"Perfect," Janice happily gave her duffel a tug, starting off again. "From your experiences during the occupation…to your work with the Bajoran-Cardassian war orphans…"

"Wait a minute…" Kira stopped her.

"To your personal knowledge of Vedek Bareil," Janice beamed.

"Bareil, I can help you with. Any questions you may have concerning the Prophets. But as far as my experiences in the Resistance?" Kira looked at Lange tenderly because, yes, she decided she liked Doctor Janice Lange. She had a very good feeling about her. Very comfortable. She was very young. Obviously very enthusiastic. Possibly a little bit overwhelmed. Possibly just a little nervous. "Or my experiences at all? I can't discuss them with you. Don't misunderstand me, I would love to. But the Federation and Bajoran Councils agreeing to my appointment as assistant is not a license to direct you in any way. Shakaar was adamant about using a Neutral for the very reason you are neutral. I'm not. I'm Bajoran."

"Oh," Janice said.

"But that's good," Kira promised, a legitimate smile on her face as her hands clasped the young woman's shoulders. "That's wonderful. Because you can see things, that I can't. You can…" she said with a trailing glance over that simple beige tunic Janice wore. "Where are your clothes?"

"My clothes?" Janice repeated.

"Your clothes. You're going to be here for a week. The only thing Dax and I found…"

"I've been appointed Chief of Security for the Bajoran side," Dax clarified her role as Janice glanced from the duffel she and Kira were dragging to the one Dax was carrying.

"They're on the shuttle," Janice nodded.

"The shuttle?" Kira blinked.

"I guess I forgot about them," Janice admitted.

"You forgot -- your clothes?" Kira started to laugh. "You remembered all of this…"

"Not too bright, huh?" Janice bit back her own giggle. "Is there anyway we can stop it? Is it still here?"

"The shuttle?" Kira looked at Dax. "No…We can _try_ to get them back for you some time tomorrow…"

"Oh, tomorrow will be fine," Janice assured. "I'll just wear this."

"No, you can't wear that," Kira shook her head.

"I can't?" Janice looked down at her comfortable tunic.

"No!" Kira scoffed. "You wore it on the shuttle, didn't you?'

"Well, yes…"

"Don't worry about it," Kira gave the duffel a tug to get it going. "We have replicators…We have shops…"

"We have Garak," Dax nodded. "Do you have an expense account?"

"An expense…" Janice started to say.

"Garak?" Kira grimaced.

"It'll give him something to do," Dax grinned.

"Point," Kira pointed with a nod for Janice. "And we have Garak. Don't worry about anything."

"Oh," Janice said. "All right," she shrugged, "if you say so."

"I say so. In the meantime we can take care of your medical screening -- "

"Medical screening?" 

"All members of the conference are required to have a medical screening by Doctor Bashir prior to opening the proceedings," Kira explained. "It's for you own benefit as well as ours. You'd want to know if you were carrying any viruses or illnesses, wouldn't you? The same as we would want to know."

"Oh, well, I have my medical clearance from Bajor…" Janice reached for her duffel.

Kira stopped her. "We also want to make sure you are who you say you are. Captain Sisko's orders."

"Security procedures," Janice got it. "I think."

"Security," Kira nodded. "I wouldn't worry about it. It's pretty painless."

__

"Pretty painless?" Janice shivered. "I'm not so sure I like the sound of that."

"Julian will be taking a blood and DNA sample for analysis as precaution," Dax said.

"What sort of precaution that can't be determined by a non-evasive screening?" Janice frowned. "I'm quite serious. I really don't think I like the sound of what you're saying."

"That you're not a Changeling," Dax smiled. "We could always hit you with a dose of radiation if you prefer -- "

"Or we could force feed you," Kira interjected.

"Force feed me?" Janice repeated.

"I wonder why the UFP never thought of that?" Dax agreed.

"I don't know," Kira shrugged.

"Probably comes under humane statutes," Dax offered Janice. "Changelings don't have digestive systems -- or any type of system common to humanoid races. Any solid form they present is the form they take on at the moment."

"Yes, I know," Janice assured. "Their natural state is a formless jell-like substance. They're extraordinarily advanced telepathically with the common element they call The Great Link which basically unites them as one."

"That's about the size of it," Kira agreed sourly when they entered Quark's and twelve chairs appeared from nowhere. Yanked out from tables, from behind pillars, as that common element called Male rose to their feet in a united wave amid a chorus of, "Oh, here."

"Oh, my."

"Oh, yes."

"Hm."

And one deep, reverberating, "Glorious," in a monotone Dax knew well.

Benjamin, on the other hand, found himself restricted to, "Um, ump, ah!" As he attempted to swallow what he was eating, clear his throat, and leap to his feet at the same time. 

CHAPTER SEVEN

A tray clattered to the floor at Kira's feet announcing the arrival of Quark better late than never to gush, "I'm in love."

"So much for sober and sensible?" Dax smiled at Kira.

She could say that again. Kira looked up from the tray to Quark. "Hey," he sneered. "When you're in love, you're in love…And I'm in love…" He stepped over the tray.

Kira's arm caught him dead across the chest. "One more step and you'll be wearing your lobes upside down on the back of your head."

Quark shuddered. Those large and protruding Ferengi ears of his she so callously threatened to dismantle were one of the more sensitive erogenous zones of his race. "You really know how to hurt a guy."

"That I do," Kira promised. "That I do."

The sound of a duffel bag stocked with data files dropping to the floor roused Worf from his stupor. His mouth closed, his eyes cleared and he was staring at: "Jadzia," Worf breathed, terror pounding in his Klingon hearts.

"Glorious?" Dax accepted the empty chair clutched in his hand.

Worf groaned. "I meant the gagh."

"You meant her hair," Dax assured, generously turning to mention Benjamin clutching the chair on her left. "You have barbecue sauce on your upper lip."

"Thank you," Sisko thanked her through his teeth, snatching up Garak's napkin to scrub his smile clean.

"Not at all," Dax said with a second flash of her smile up at Worf.

"I meant," Worf insisted, "the gagh. It is glorious!" He barked across the masses to Quark.

"Go on," Quark waved back with a blush, promptly proceeding to hammer Kira out of the way. She hit the floor with a crash. Quark halted to eye her but then he just shrugged. "You only live once."

"Yes, apparently," Bashir snapped to attention with a hurried and shocked reach for Kira. 

"Leave me alone!" she ordered. "Just leave me alone! Let go!"

"All right." He let go, and Kira promptly hit the deck a second time. Bashir grinned sheepishly down on her. "You said to let go."

"Yes…" Odo said as Kira rose stiffly, straightening her uniform with a contained nod to Janice understandably taken aback.

"Are you all right?" Janice asked.

"I'm fine," Kira's nod turned to Sisko waiting patiently. "I'd like you to meet -- "

"Garak!" Garak exhaled in appreciation at Kira's side, delighted to make the acquaintance of such an attractive young woman brightening up their otherwise dull and meaningless lives. "Elam Garak!"

"Julian Bashir!" Bashir heartily supported Garak's appraisal.

"Miles O'Brien!" The Chief threatened to make it unanimous.

"Oh, for -- What do you think you're doing?" Kira gave O'Brien a judicious clout in the arm.

"What?" he insisted defensively. "I can't say hello to the woman?"

"Quark," Quark slipped in with an oiled smirk, firmly planting himself in front of Doctor Lange and his hand casually down in O'Brien's dish. "Coffee, tea, or…" He felt the warmth of mashed potatoes and gravy oozing through his fingers.

"Lamb," O'Brien nodded as Quark picked up his dripping hand with a scowl.

"Glorious," Dax agreed.

Worf huffed. "Your hair," he assured the Human female by the name of Doctor Janice Lange. "It is glorious. I am Worf; a Klingon. And to a Klingon, your hair is glorious. Worthy of mention."

"Oh," Janice bit her lip with a light giggle for the imposing Klingon Worf towering a head or two above everyone. "Well, actually, I was admiring yours."

"Mine…" Worf's hand strayed to his long and tightly braided locks pulled back in a heavy, neat tail.

"Yours. I would love…"

"I would be honored…" Worf swelled to volunteer before he sat down suddenly and hard.

"We get the picture," Dax released the back of his tunic gnarled in her fist.

"To explain to you the procedure," Worf extended Janice. "With Jadzia in attendance, of course."

"We're a couple," Dax pleasantly added. "Where Worf goes, I go. It's just the Klingon way."

"Oh, good," Janice said. "Because, that might be fun…" Out of the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of Kira shaking her head. "Or maybe not."

"No. I'm sorry, but no." And Kira extended that unyielding no to Bashir.

"No, what?" he blinked, innocently, he might add.

"Indeed, Major," Garak agreed equally befuddled by what Kira could possibly mean. "No, what?"

"I said, no," Kira insisted.

"What no?" O'Brien scoffed. "I said hello, I can't say hello?"

"Shows how much you know about politics," Quark sneered at her. "I'm a Neutral."

Odo eyed Kira expectantly, his voice droll. "No, what?"

"Just no," she laughed. "I didn't want to make you feel left out."

Odo grunted. "Yes, well, shows how much you know about Changelings… Constable Odo," he moved past Kira's agog expression to introduce himself to the young woman responsible for the group of them taking turns at making asses out of themselves. "Chief of Security for DS9. Though in your express instance you'll find your security advisor to be Commander Dax -- Doctor Lange? I presume?"

"Oh, yes," Janice quickly apologized to the interesting looking Constable Odo with the soft, understated features that almost looked as if they weren't finished. He wasn't a species she recognized. His manner as soft as his appearance though, she felt immediately comfortable with him. "Janice Lange, yes," she smiled. "I'm sorry, where are my manners…"

"You should probably ask where are ours…" Odo turned to Sisko. "This is Captain Benjamin Sisko, who I believe Major Kira had been about to introduce."

"Oh, yes," Janice shook Sisko's outstretched hand, her emerald eyes sparkling in excitement to meet the Captain she had heard so much about over the last few weeks. He was a muscular man with smooth dark skin and a cleanly shaven head. Approximately the same height of his lanky Constable, he was somewhere between the age of Odo and the shorter, broader Miles O'Brien. A narrow, closely clipped beard added a devilish, almost provocative flare to Sisko's appearance that she didn't believe for a moment. Bristling energy and strength tempered with kindness emanated from him. Good humor; good fun. "How do you do, Captain Sisko? I'm Doctor Janice Lange, First Minister Shakaar's representative."

"I'm quite fine," Sisko's deep, vibrant voice was welcoming. "I trust you are also. Your trip?"

"Oh, yes," Janice agreed. "But please, call me Janice -- or is that allowed?" she checked with Kira.

"No," Kira maintained whether it was or not.

"Oh," Janice said with apology for Sisko. "I'm sorry, all of these formalities have me a little confused."

"Chief O'Brien will certainly agree with you there," Sisko gestured for her to be seated.

"Yes, Chief O'Brien certainly will," O'Brien assured. "Or is that allowed?" he verified. "I mean, can I talk to the woman? Or is that a violation of some protocol?"

"Not for this evening, no," Sisko smiled. "And certainly not," he reassured Janice, "in the presence of all sides -- or most sides," he smiled. "The Cardassian representatives have not yet arrived. Still," he smiled, "as commander of this station, I see no harm in everyone meeting each other under social and hopefully pleasant circumstances.

"As it is possibly I who should be apologizing to you," he smiled, "on the behalf of my staff and guests…" A warm, twinkle flickered through his eyes turning to Dax. "I know that must be crossing Dax's mind…"

"Just briefly," Dax smiled in return.

"Yes…" Sisko cleared his throat. "As well as Major Kira's…"

"For a moment or two," she said.

"Yes…" Sisko quickly opted to retreat back to Lange. "However, I can assure you, we were all simply startled to find you had arrived…"

Dax likewise noticed Benjamin just glossed right over how he and the rest of them had been notified over his com badge of Lange's unanticipated arrival by security.

"Oh, yes, I understand from Major Kira I'm early," Janice nodded.

"Several hours," Sisko accepted without the slightest thought of accusation. "But quite all right as I said. We do have Mister Garak with us…" he reintroduced Garak seated to her immediate left; a Cardassian of average height and weight with a highly provocative air, invitational. Like a spider coaxing a fly into its web. Garak made Janice want to laugh; she wasn't quite sure why. "A native of Cardassia Prime, should Legate Damar have any questions."

"Which, of course he will," Garak beamed at Doctor Lange, truly an exceptionally attractive young woman by Human standards, that he did concur. Highly provocative in her own right with her flagrantly understated tunic and untamed mane of hair. She looked wild, free. So utterly natural and extraordinarily delicate at the same time. "But never fear, my dear, as always, Captain Sisko's wish is my command."

"Oh, good," Janice breathed relieved. "Because it doesn't matter to me what I sleep in, but I will need to borrow something from you to wear in the morning; I hope that's not too inconvenient."

Worf stabbed himself in the mouth with his fork. Bashir choked. O'Brien inhaled his beer while Quark dropped another tray. Sisko just cleared his throat again in tune with Garak's halting stammer, "I beg -- I beg your pardon?"

"I left mine on the shuttle," Janice shrugged. "I don't know how I did, but I did. Major Kira's already mentioned if anyone could, you would be able to help me."

"I see…" Garak's slow and deliberate nod of understanding trailed its way to finding Kira even though no, he didn't understand anymore than the rest of them -- Other than Commander Dax, Garak noted. Yes, apparently she did understand something.

"You're a tailor, Garak," Kira reminded him coldly.

"Oh," Garak said. "Oh, yes, that's true I am, aren't I?" he recalled.

"Yes!" she snapped.

"And how very kind and thoughtful of Major Kira to recommend me, my dear," Garak oozed his way back to Janice. "Oh, yes, how very generous of her. Because, yes, I am a tailor by trade, that's very true…Not always, naturally," he candidly disclosed for her information. "But, yes, for the past several years since I have been living here on DS9. Prior to that -- "

"He was a tailor on Cardassia Prime," Major Kira attempted to be humorous.

"A spy, actually," Garak's coating smile paused to coat Kira. "You're missing a unique opportunity, Major; I am surprised to have to point out. Should Legate Damar present any questions regarding my involvement with Doctor Lange, which of course he will, we'll just remind him how I was once a member of our once illustrious Obsidian Order…Something that should alleviate any concerns," he promised Janice, "that I am not spying on you. Because of course, I am; I spy on everyone."

"You're funny," Janice was glad to find she been right to like him immediately even though she did believe that distinct devilish glitter in his watery eyes. The same as she believed the one she could see in Commander Dax's. Major Kira, she suspected was one of the more serious members of the small group. Kira reminded Janice of someone and she knew just who. Anon. Janice smiled at Garak, one of the few Cardassians she had ever met in her life beyond Anon and his small crew. Despite Shakaar's liberal and generous effort to prepare her for what should be the culture shock of her life, Garak really didn't seem to be anymore disdainful or ominous than Anon had.

No more intimidating than the strong and silent Klingon Worf.

No more suspiciously watchful than the young doctor Julian Bashir.

No more _suspicious_ than Chief Miles O'Brien whose energy held a slightly sharper edge than Captain Sisko. Charged with a stream of mild impatience and minor irritation, Chief O'Brien appeared to be a man who needed to be shown things rather than told. Similar to Major Kira, and certainly no more frightening himself than the playful Commander Dax, equally powerful in her physical appearance and aura.

Speaking of playful. Janice's attention flitted between listening to Garak and smiling back at Quark's impatient look of disgust smeared across his face. 

"A much appreciated compliment," Garak was nodding. "If I may compliment you in return, for while not being Klingon, I must say your hair is quite striking. Really quite extraordinary. From the texture to the color."

"Oh, yes," Bashir supported.

"Definitely," O'Brien promised, "top notch."

"We know," Quark assured Worf opening his mouth, "glorious."

"That was my foot you kicked, by the way," O'Brien alerted Dax. "Worf's the one on your left. I'm on your right."

"Sorry," she shrugged.

"It's all right." O'Brien just passed the kick onto Julian who passed it on to Kira who passed it on to Odo who passed it across to Worf.

"So what's the bottom line here?" Quark questioned Janice, more interested in the hairdo that took up three times the space than she did at the table than in who was kicking whom. "Half the customers are asking if you're Klingon, the other half have a bet going you were hit with a phaser on stun."

"Human," Janice crossed her heart. 

"Uh, huh," Quark gave Bashir a sock between his shoulder blades. "That's okay. We'll find out. You've got a date with him later for a physical -- trust me, I know everything," he forestalled Kira's indignant yelp. "I'm surprised I have to point that out."

"Well, personally, I, for one, am glad you did," Bashir jumped to his feet. "For heaven's sake, the woman could be highly contagious. Exposing us all to all sorts of deadly -- "

"Sit," Sisko directed, "down."

"Sitting," Bashir sat back down with a grin. "Just a joke, of course… Though I'm sure either Kira or Dax have explained to you," he confirmed with Janice, "that you will have to undergo a medical screening. Nothing too dramatic. Just a small sample of your DNA. I have all sorts of things like teddy bears for you to hold, if you're a coward like the rest of us."

It was around that time that Sisko was interrupted again over his com badge by security officer Lieutenant Jacobs.

__

"Captain?" 

"Sisko, here," Sisko's attention was absorbed by Quark handing Janice a menu; five voices joined in a chorus of recommendations.

__

"We just received a transmission from the Cardassian battle cruiser Tir. They will be requesting permission to dock within the next thirty minutes."

Sisko snapped to attention; Janice Lange forgotten.

__

"Captain?" Lieutenant Jacobs pressed.

"Understood, Lieutenant," Sisko assured. "Permission granted. Thank you. I'll take it from here."

"Is everything all right?" Janice asked when Sisko hurriedly begged off with Worf and Odo.

"Oh, it's fine," Kira settled down next to Dax. "It's fine. Legate Damar is apparently early also…I think what I'd like to do is schedule the medical screenings for tonight?"

"Yes," Bashir understood her reasoning. "That way I can just take a second DNA and blood sample tomorrow morning for comparison analysis right before the conference."

"I agree," Dax nodded.

"Not that we mean to suggest we're paranoid," O'Brien joked to Janice's cringe.

"Oh, no, I understand. Kira explained to me about the concern for Changeling infiltration -- Is Odo by any chance a Changeling?" she wondered curiously.

"Well, yes," Kira answered slowly. "Why?"

"An excellent question, Major," Garak agreed, intrigued and thinking about Shakaar's briefing that was either extraordinarily vague, or extraordinarily detailed as far as whom his representative could expect to come in contact with during her short stay. A decision one could probably reach by simply deciding if they accepted Lange's casual appearance and air at face value. Considering the subject matter Doctor Lange was there to discuss, it wouldn't make any sense if they did.

Doctor Lange, however, was casual and simple in her answer to Major Kira. "I noticed he didn't appear to be eating or drinking like everyone else…That and his facial features are extraordinary. Smooth. Formed, but almost formless at the same time…I'm sorry, I'm probably not making any sense…"

"Oh, no," Julian was eager to interject, overruling her self-criticism with a remarkably weak argument that was sure to glean everyone else's attention even if failed to capture Doctor Lange's. "What's extraordinary, actually, is your observation to your hypotheses. Both entirely correct, and almost empathic in character. Are you quite sure you're entirely Human?"

"As opposed to…?" Dax couldn't resist petitioning Kira.

The Chief's groan was more to the point. "Oh, Jeez…here we go."

"As far as I know I am," Janice laughed to Bashir. "Are you being serious?"

"I'll never tell," he smiled. "Though my medical scan just might."

"Oh, really," she pushed up the sleeve of her tunic in teasing counterpoint. "What will your medical scan say about this?"

"An implant?" Kira frowned at the evidence of small electronic node visible beneath the soft underside of the doctor's forearm.

"Yes," Janice nodded. "I could really be a tree, Doctor, I should warn you. Instead of blocking my DNA patterns, it could really be a pulse center for your scans to lock onto."

"Well it's definitely on a pulse center…" Bashir rose to his feet, fascinated. "May I?"

"Of course," she extended her arm for his inspection. "You will anyway."

"So I will," he grinned. "Dare I try out my own empathic abilities? I say Bajoran. True or false? Probably not farfetched to think of a DNA inhibitor."

"True," she laughed again. "My work on the outer colonies found me there during the Federation-Dominion war. The elder of my village was concerned for my safety from any scout ships that might be in the area, so he gave me this to block their scans."

"Extraordinary onto itself," Bashir examined the area as best as he could without a tricorder. "Certainly quite thoughtful of him -- Garak, you see this?"

"Oh, yes," Garak assured. "Yes…Your village elder is a former member of the Bajoran Resistance, my dear, I take it?"

"Possibly," she shrugged. "I really don't know."

"Though safe to presume," Garak smiled. "As it's also reasonable to presume your Bajoran friend was mildly apprehensive that being Human you might experience some form of rejection to his prosaic technology. It really should be implanted just slightly deeper for maximum effectiveness."

"Well, actually, yes it should be," Kira agreed. "But, no, this will work…" She denounced Garak's indifference impatiently. "You know it will work."

"Oh, yes, I do know," he purred. His senses, not only Julian's, increasing aroused by this young woman with every passing moment. "From our short range scans, quite well. As well as the Federation or the Klingon Empire. From the Dominion? I would be far less confident. All really moot points, my dear, because you realize once in your presence, it would be a different story entirely. Of Human ancestry or some other species somewhat more advanced, you're quite obviously not Cardassian or Jem'Hadar. Fortunately though that did not happen?" he waited eagerly for Janice to contradict him; mildly disappointed when she did not.

"No. Do you have to remove it?"

"Oh, no, I wouldn't think so…" Bashir looked to Kira for confirmation. "I will have to make record of it, yes. Possibly conduct a few other scans…"

"I'm sure that will be fine with Sisko," she said. "After all, Shakaar is certainly aware -- "

"Oh, yes, Adon knows all about it," Janice nodded. "He insisted it be documented on my medical screenings."

"Did he?" Bashir grinned at Kira.

"New?" Dax scoured the carpet in an attempt to change the subject.

"Two years," Quark snorted from above her tipped head.

"Nice try though," O'Brien extended.

She thought so.

"Well, we certainly can't argue with that," Bashir's grin pressed Kira.

"I'll clear it with Benjamin," she said. "But, yes, I'm certain you can keep it."

"Oh, good," Janice relaxed. "It's almost like a gift from a friend. I'd hate to have part with it."

"It is a gift, my dear," Garak reiterated. "A very thoughtful one -- what exactly is your line of work, if I may ask?"

"Archeology," Janice accepted a glass of wine from O'Brien. "I have a grant from the Bajoran government for two years to do studies on -- well, the outer colonies," she smiled. "Makes sense."

"I see…" Garak contemplated the explanation. "And that's how all of this came about…I mean, as far you're being chosen as First Minister Shakaar's representative?"

"Yes." Lange disappointed him again with the simplicity of her answer. "And that's how my hair came about -- the color. It's a root dye. I have a little friend -- Nadya," she told Kira. "You'd love her. She's nine years old. Hates my hair. Absolutely hates it. She made me promised that before I went to Bajor Prime to meet the Council of Ministers I'd let her help me do something with it."

Bashir smiled. "Well, that very well may be because she doesn't hate it quite as much as she claims to."

"No, she hates it." Lange proceeded to tell her story about her little friend complete with animated gestures and asides to everyone's sheer delight. Kira and Dax found the short tale generally interesting as well; difficult not to. Doctor Janice Lange was a personable young woman. Unpretentious and refreshing with her open honesty. That concerned Dax just a little. If the Klingons were predators, the Cardassians were destroyers, both often acting without provocation. Both seemingly steadfast in their refusal to develop their societies beyond their advanced technologies to the practices and principles of what truly separated a civilized world from barbarians. Dax wasn't so sure bright and gifted Janice Lange was a person capable of enacting change on an audience that didn't want to change. For all her talents, she lacked the one most needed endowment of all; armor. Personal armor. Without it the change far more likely to occur would be within Janice Lange. Confusion, if she was lucky. Destruction, if she was not. Dax glanced at Kira wondering if she was thinking what she was thinking, having a feeling she was.

Kira was. Carrying the premise of Janice Lange needing a receptive audience in order to be effective all the way to Shakaar who had to realize that. That troubled her deeply. Uncertain as to what the destruction of Doctor Lange would ultimately achieve other than Bajor was, as always, right? And Cardassia was, as always, wrong? Like a lamb before the slaughter, Kira eyed Janice surrounded by her enthralled audience that wasn't captivated to the point that the one with the power and control was Janice Lange. Far from it. From Quark setting down a tray with a selection of every conceivable food item he could fit on one plate. To Bashir's rapt attention, to the glint in Garak's eyes, to the Chief's unabashed interest.

"I've tried to explain to her," Lange was saying, "'Nadya, this is my hair.' 'What can I do?' Make it a different color. What color? Yellow.

"Yellow," she nodded to Kira.

"Yellow," she said to Dax.

"I'm thinking to myself," she reminisced with her laugh, "of this gigantic _sun_ surrounding my head. I couldn't do it; I just couldn't. So we compromised. That way Nadya was happy, and Bajor Prime was happy -- I guess," she laughed again. "No one told me to go home."

"What a marvelous story," Bashir applauded.

"So it is," O'Brien helped himself to sampling her dinner. "Want a job?"

"A job?" 

"Babysitting."

"Oh, you have children," Janice smiled tenderly.

"Two," O'Brien nodded proudly. "Little boy, little girl. They're on Earth with their mother -- Keiko's her name. But they'll back. The lot of them. Soon."

"How wonderful for you."

"Oh, yeah?" O'Brien chuckled. "Who says? Nah, I'm just kidding you," he promised when she blinked. "Yes, it is wonderful. I'd be lost without them -- I am lost without them. I'm also serious. Anytime you want to give up this archeology business, come see me. Molly would love you -- heck," he grinned at Kira. "The lady lets some kid paint her hair? Trust me, she'd love her."

"Eh, heh," Kira flashed a row of clenched teeth.

"What, 'eh, heh'?" O'Brien blustered. "What am I doing? I'm talking -- excuse me," he patted Janice's arm. "I can't talk to you. I'm cheating on my wife if I do."

"Oh, well, that's very true, Chief O'Brien," Garak collaborated. "At least as far as being a married man," he notified Janice. "Which no, neither Julian or myself -- "

"Or Quark," Quark interjected.

"Happen to be," Garak agreed.

"Oh, no," Bashir hurried to confirm his single, and therefore highly eligible status. "No, Quark's brother Rom stole my last girl, I'm sorry to say. Where Worf…" he batted his eyes at Dax, "stole the one before her."

"And neither was too difficult," Quark assured.

"No, unfortunately," Garak's head swayed in sad support of Julian's perpetual heartache. "Inexplicable really. It's not as if there's anything noticeably wrong with Julian -- though quite apparently there must be something terribly wrong, somewhere."

"Think if I vomited anyone would notice?" Kira wondered.

"Probably not," Dax offered her a taste of gagh just in case she wanted to try.

"I'll pass."

"However, not dismissing lightly Julian's painful history of chronic rejection," Garak was saying, "I would also like to say how very much I enjoyed your story about your hair -- notwithstanding you, personally. What a delightful and charming individual you are, Doctor Lange. Truly, the Cardassian Union doesn't stand a chance."

"Good," Janice approved. "Because if any of you," she pointed to O'Brien. "You," she pointed out Sisko's empty seat. "Or you," she promised Garak and Bashir. "Pretend you're the Cardassian representatives for a moment -- try to be difficult, remember Adon, Kira and I are going to come away with our Consult anyway."

"Consider us on notice," Bashir smiled. "Though I admit I hadn't realize First Minister Shakaar actually supports the Cardassian proposal?"

"No," Kira was startled, "neither did I."

"Oh, yes," Janice picked up her glass of wine. "Absolutely. He's quite adamant about it -- Not that there isn't room for compromise. There's always room for compromise. That's what we're here for. Right?" 

"Has my vote," O'Brien lifted his glass in toast.

"And also mine, my dear," Garak joined in, in all good fun. "In my temporary assignment as Consular Representative for the Cardassian Union, I can't imagine Gul Dukat not being as receptive to you as I am."

She heard him wrong. Janice's glass paused on her lips. "Gul Dukat?"

"Don't panic." Doctor Bashir moved to relieve any concerns she might have over meeting the infamous Cardassian tyrant face to face. But then he had to be thinking of Anon's father; of course he was. To where she wasn't thinking of anyone other than Anon. Janice shook her head in an effort to pay attention to what was being said. 

"Oh, well, no, I'm not panicking…" she denied. Garak noticed her quick look up from her wine for Kira. "Am I?"

"Maybe a little." Major Kira agreed in thorough understanding.

"For no reason, really," Garak upheld. "As Julian claims…"

"We'll protect you," O'Brien swore in oath.

"That's very kind of you, but I really don't think I need protection…"

Garak watched her eyes flit anxiously between Kira and Commander Dax.

"I was just surprised. I had no idea…"

"Benjamin just received the disclosure notice himself a couple of hours ago," Dax explained. "While you were en route from the planet's surface -- Something which actually, yes, should have been clue," she submitted to Kira.

"That Damar was also en route," Kira agreed sourly. "Federation and Bajoran surveillance would have picked up the Cardassian battle cruiser on long range scans; even before they crossed the border."

"I'm sure they did," Dax told Janice. "However, the UFP supported the Cardassian Government's request to keep the names of the delegates concealed until the time of the conference…"

"And when we found out who they were," Bashir assured, "we could certainly understand why."

"I'm confused." Doctor Lange was still shaking her head. "Who are you saying is going to be here?"

"Gul _Anon_ Dukat," Garak clarified for her. "The eldest son of the former emperor of Cardassia, my dear. Along with a younger brother, yes, is my understanding. Anon is only about your age -- in Federation years, of course."

"Yes," Kira squeezed Janice's hand tightly. "No, the representative isn't Dukat." 

"Definitely only his sons," Bashir promised. "Good heavens, we'll have the woman in tears…."

"Oh, I'm not near tears," Janice denied. "I'm just…well, surprised," she maintained. "I had no idea. But…." she straightened her shoulders, setting her glass firmly down on the table. "I do now."

"Very true," Garak cooed. "As I maintain, it's quite reasonable to suggest Gul Dukat's apt to be as surprised in meeting you."

"Oh, yes," Janice nodded. "Yes, I can appreciate that."

"Can you? How extraordinarily confident of you, my dear," Garak picked up her wine to offer it back to her. "Really, most becoming -- "

"That's enough!" Kira snatched the glass away. "Two's enough! We don't need three!"

"And we'll tell him, if necessary," Chief O'Brien boasted in reminder.

"Quite," Bashir begged the glass back from Kira. "Like father, like son -- I'm sure you've heard that before. Interestingly enough the Klingons have a similar saying. 'The sins of the father -- '"

"Actually," Dax interceded with a smile, "it's the dishonor of the father dishonors his sons and their sons for three generations."

"Close enough," Bashir handed Janice her wine.

"So it is," Garak agreed. "Forewarned is forearmed, my dear, I believe you Humans also say?"

Yes, they did. Though Janice wasn't sure what any of them seemed to think they meant as far as Anon. "What was your father like?" she asked Bashir.

"A con artist," O'Brien chuckled. "So forewarned is forearmed, is right."

"And yours?" Janice's laugh turned to Garak.

"Unfortunately," Garak inclined his head, "my father was a man who delayed saying what needed to be said until it was too late."

"Like my brother," Quark assured her.

"And yours?" Janice asked O'Brien.

CHAPTER EIGHT

A strong man with a strong frame. Gul Dukat's eldest son Anon was shorter than his father. Much broader and heavier through the neck, across his shoulders and chest. The face stern. The eyes cast in concentration, his thoughts inward. In contrast, the younger brother was the image of who his father must have been at his age. Tall. Slender. His shoulders carried high and back, supported by his hands on his hips as he looked around the airlock.

"Right down to the watchful, darting pupils," Sisko noted under his breath, completing Odo's observation of the Sentinel Pfrann dubiously promoted to the rank of Lieutenant for the occasion -- as if there wasn't something dubious surrounding Dukat's rank of Gul; Odo was sure there was.

"Hm," he grunted, stopping shy of proposing perhaps they should consider themselves to be lucky the one in charge was Damar. That, of course, would remain to be seen. They same as it would as far as just how much weight a man's looks, or lack of them carried; Odo highly doubted if it was very much at all for either of them.

"Speaking of which," Odo gave a cynical nod toward the hefty, ponderous figure of Damar exiting the lock; quite possibly the youngest Emperor on record ever to rule Cardassia, Union or otherwise. That was not a bad achievement for thirty years of life; not bad at all.

"Sisko." Damar endeavored to greet the Captain cordially, his eyes more on Worf. "Bending rules already?"

"Apparently so," Sisko returned smoothly.

Damar threw back his head with a laugh. "We're two of kind."

"I wouldn't count on it," Sisko replied to the hand clapping down on his shoulder.

"We'll see," Damar promised with a nod in his assistant's direction; a Cardassian vole for lack of a better description. "You know my Mister Paq…"

"I believe we may have met, yes," Sisko acknowledged one of Dukat's former security chiefs while in residence aboard Terok Nor. Obviously Paq's interpretation of loyalty was similar to Damar's. For that matter similar to the Dukats; both young and old. 

"My two representatives," Damar's hand called Dukat and his brother to come to attention. "Gul Dukat and his lieutenant…"

Dukat's step forward was sharp and immediate once apparently realizing he was being spoken to. His surprisingly quiet reply, a crisp, terse question. "Where are our quarters?"

"Well…" Odo thought he covered the pause rather nicely, "they're not here."

Dukat's quick glance over Odo was equally crisp and disinterested. "Then we are to be escorted to them -- "

"Captain," Sisko interrupted him, "Benjamin Sisko. Commander of Deep Space Nine, Gul Dukat."

Dukat's eyes traveled back to him with caustic, though still quiet, assurance, "I know who you are."

He walked off with a call for his brother to follow him. And so perhaps the striking resemblance the younger of the two brothers bore to the father was solely physical, but then again, perhaps it wasn't. Sentinel Pfrann followed his brother, but not before he turned to Sisko with an, oh, so familiar expression. And an, oh, so familiar ring of heavily burdened exasperation conveyed by a deep sigh, "If you will excuse us, Captain." 

"Youth," Damar shrugged like a permissive parent.

"Arrogance," Sisko corrected. "Curb it."

"We were early, Captain," Anon announced to Sisko approaching him waiting at the turbolift with his brother, "because for some reason our two borders seemed devoid of Federation patrols."

If it was an effort to employ that infamous Cardassian sarcasm, the Gul failed. The only thing Dukat continued to sound to Odo was irritable. A few decibels lower and deeper than his father's usual volume, that was true. But then the voice was a little hoarse, or raw around the edges, and so that perhaps explained why; Dukat had a cold.

"Sorry to disappoint you," Sisko activated the turbolift via a control panel; a security measure set in place for the auspicious occasion.

"Ha," Anon clipped his laugh short. The door swished open and he stepped inside. "No disappointment. I presume Klingon cloaking devices."

"You presume incorrectly," Sisko said evenly. "But that's quite all right. You are welcome to presume anything you like -- Acting upon it however is an entirely different matter," his dark-brown eyes met Anon's watery red stare; Odo had already made a note of that. Bilateral implants designed to improve the Cardassian vision in bright light, as well as night. He was a Gul. Not one who achieved his rank sitting behind a desk.

"You will be scheduled for a complete medical screening…" the Captain was also taking note of the optical implants and thinking of others.

"I have the notification," Anon interrupted and Sisko paused, waiting him out.

He didn't have to wait long. "What do you expect me to do?" Anon requested impatiently. "Argue with you about it? Sorry to disappoint you," he faced the door of the lift waiting for Sisko to give his orders. "Where are we going?"

"Promenade," Sisko directed, and the lift engaged.

"Promenade?" Anon scowled slightly at Pfrann. "Our quarters are on the Promenade?"

"The Bajoran representative has arrived ahead of schedule -- "

"Surprise," Damar's snort interjected over Sisko.

"I don't see the harm in everyone meeting each other this evening," Sisko continued.

"No," Anon refused. "We have no interest in socializing. We are here for one purpose. Stop the lift. Stop it!" he insisted, his finger pointed directly in Sisko's face. Worf's defensive reaction was immediate. Sisko was even quicker. His hand shooting out in a preemptive strike, stopping Worf before Dukat found himself a permanent part of the station's sub-structure.

"Take your finger out from in front of my face," Sisko advised the unimpressed and motionless Gul quietly, "before I snap it off."

He did. Almost triumphantly with that short laugh, the hint of a smile flitting across his face. "My father is right about you."

"Possibly," Sisko granted.

"Depending," Anon understood, "on what he says."

"Regardless," Sisko assured, "of what he says. Understand one thing, Gul Dukat, your father's son or not, this is my station."

"And like all young men," Damar settled back with a chuckle, "he can't decide who he is."

"And you can, helmsman?" Anon retorted. Damar reared to find his advance in turn immediately checked by Worf, Odo, and Odo supposed if one wanted to push it, the loyal assistant Mister Paq. 

"That is enough!" Sisko barked, livid. "Halt program!"

"Anon, please!" his brother's plea supported that request.

"Don't correct me!" Anon silenced him with a snap; his glittering infra-red pupils focused on Sisko. "We prefer to adhere to the drawn protocols of contact accepted by the Cardassian Union."

"I don't give a damn what you prefer," Sisko assured. "Less interest in your domestic quarrels. One last time, Dukat, this is my station and if I say jump, Mister, you will jump. That includes extending your superiors the respect due them -- in public! I don't care if you slit each other's throats elsewise. But, not on my station, and not on my time."

"Kira Nerys," Anon nodded. Not that that had anything to do with anything other than reiterating his continued lack of interest in anything Sisko might have to say.

Sisko stared at him. "What about Major Kira?" he insisted. "Yes, Major Kira has been appointed to the position as assistant to the Bajoran representative. If you have any complaints, address them to your own Council!"

"I have the notice," Anon agreed. "I didn't read it. I was…" his hand fluttered in the direction of Damar, "too busy reading his position. Did they grant the post of Federation assistant to you?"

"They did indeed."

"Good," he approved, turning to face the door of the lift. "Address your questions and recommendations to me. Instruct Nerys to do the same and the Cardassians will leave your station within two days, not a week."

"I'll make a note of that," Sisko finally replied.

"Your choice," Anon shrugged. "You want to dance, dance. Me? I prefer to jump."

"Yes, well," as far as Odo could see what the Captain probably wanted to do more than anything was knock him down more than a peg or two. Though, of course, Sisko didn't; that would have been rude. Likely in violation of some diplomatic protocol -- to borrow Garak's defense -- should anyone happen to complain. 

"Promenade," Sisko turned away.

The lift reengaged, stopping again shortly thereafter. The door opened. Dukat exited to shrug at the swank display of Federation prosperity spreading out over the Promenade once drenched in the sweat and filth of Bajoran workers beneath those magnificent Cardassian archways. "You like your trinkets of glamour."

One step though and he stopped to look at his brother silent beside him, a grin, interestingly enough creasing the Gul's face. "Who cares where we eat. Our quarters or some Quark's. Do you care?"

"No, I don't care," Pfrann shook his head quietly.

Anon eyed him for another long moment to suddenly throw back his head with a laugh. He clapped his arm around Pfrann's shoulders.

"Anon…" Pfrann attempted to shrug the arm off.

Anon would have none of it. He strode off under those magnificent archways, his arm firmly in place, the other gesturing as he spoke, cajoling his brother. Taunting, teasing until the younger one surrendered to the pulls, the punches, the pokes, and started to laugh.

Sisko was watching two brothers. One a very powerful young man, unharnessed in some ways, far too confident in others. The younger one blatantly terrified of losing his elder, possibly to himself. "His father's station," he remarked to Odo stepping up beside him.

That also warranted little more than a grunt. "Yes, well, it's not his father's station."

"Tell him that," Worf spoke from above their heads.

To the contrary, Sisko would rather tell someone else, something else. He turned to Damar.

"Have patience with him, Captain," Damar proposed with a tolerant smile in an attempt to cloak his impotence put alongside his former master's prodigy.

"Interesting choice for a representative, Legate Damar," Sisko assured. "Extremely interesting."

Pfrann saw her first as they entered Quark's upper level. Anon was too busy attempting to further his understanding of his schizophrenic father as he gazed around the glittering glitz and glamour of Quark's entertainment palace. "No wonder Dukat likes this place. No wonder he can't stay away.

"No wonder he loses it," he turned to follow after Pfrann with a knowing chuckle. "He doesn't know what to do with it."

"Anon!" his brother whirled back to crash into him like a maddened Klingon targ was on his coattails.

"What's the matter with you?" Anon scoffed. "No one's going to stop you. See all those?" his finger flickered around to twenty odd yellow statues assembling to enclose the immediate area; an effort not too noticeable to the rest of the patrons pausing in their dinners to cast a puzzled, interested look.

"I want to go," Pfrann pleaded in desperation. "Please, let's just go."

"No, we're not going anywhere," Anon stepped around him to continue his stride on through the dining area. "If they want to look, let them look…" he spotted the two pieces of luggage in the middle of the floor. The young, slender, brown-haired Human male in Federation uniform sitting on one of them. The small Bajoran woman attractive in her delicate bone structure and short dark red hair seated on a chair across from him on the other side of the table.

"Anon," his brother said in his ear.

Anon noticed Garak last after he looked over the tall woman, striking and beautiful with what appeared to be tattoos framing her face. She sat between the Bajoran officer who had to be Major Kira and a muscular man; another Human. A Ferengi waiter hovering in the foreground.

"Anon," his brother begged.

"Janice," Anon answered. Her clothes were as simple as he remembered them. The insanity of her hair surrounding her. A familiar smile contorting her face as she talked to the tall woman with the tattoos seated across from her. Anon frowned. "What species is she?"

"A Trill, I think," Pfrann sighed, far more interested in the threat of Janice Lange. "Anon…"

"Curzon Dax," Anon nodded, pleased. "Good. If Shakaar or Sisko attempt to scream contamination we'll just blame it on him."

"Him?" Pfrann stared at Dax.

"Her. Him. Whoever," Anon dismissed. "The Cardassian is Garak."

"Garak?" Pfrann's troubled look shifted immediately from Dax to his father's enemy.

"Trust me, Pfrann," Anon's hand clapped down on his shoulder, "the Federation and Shakaar have far more to be concerned about than we do."

"Anon!" Pfrann grabbed to stop him when he removed his hand.

"I love her, Pfrann!" Anon angrily pulled away. "I'm not going to betray her, anymore than she is going to betray us, and neither are you!"

"What?" Pfrann stared at him.

Anon sighed. "I think after eight months I know this."

"What are you talking about eight months?" Pfrann hissed. "You haven't even seen her!"

That was true. Anon studied Janice. "You're right. I think I should tell her now that I do." He pushed ahead of his brother.

To Worf approaching with Sisko and the others it almost appeared as if the two brothers were engaged in an embrace for some reason until Worf looked past them to the table. He stiffened. "Garak."

Sisko's attention shifted immediately from Damar to Garak; the man he had completely forgotten about. "Worf," he directed in agreement as Dukat took a step around his brother.

"Garak…" The voice was Damar's, bristling beside him.

"At ease, Mister Damar," Sisko moved forward quickly after Worf.

"Legate Damar," Odo reminded in his ear.

"Whichever," Sisko waved.

They looked up, Janice included, when Anon appeared to circle the luggage before looking beyond his survey, past Bashir quickly standing up, to Garak. Something in the air perhaps? Something in the eyes? Something prompted Janice Lange to turn back around to Garak, her hand reaching out to clench his. Her gesture and soft, gentle smile generating a look of confusion across his face.

"Yes, well, if that's not empathic…" Bashir muttered as Janice turned back to face Dukat, positioning herself between him and Garak.

"I'll say…" O'Brien muttered back.

"Or briefing," Dax offered, not to dampen the romance.

"Briefing?" O'Brien scoffed. "Briefing?" 

"Quite," Bashir agreed. "Wouldn't it have been prejudicial of Shakaar to mention Ziyal?"

"Yes," Kira answered coldly.

Garak spit Janice's hair out of his mouth to find himself face to chest with Worf planted between him and a sullen Damar.

"Doctor Janice Lange, Gul Dukat," Janice reached out to shake Anon's hand hanging straight at his side. She grasped it anyway, in both of hers, explaining pleasantly as he looked, "It means welcome. Peace. Friendship -- "

"And thank you." The cool grip of his hand around hers was tight. His eyes probing hers deeply. The silent moment shared between them, to him, was awkward. He wasn't sure if he wouldn't have preferred to have been the one to lie about any past acquaintance rather than her. It was unlike her, he would have thought. That disturbed him. Annoyed him in some ways, excited him in others. Her warm hand clenched his as tightly as he held hers; her eyes hopeful, happy, anxious, sad. It was going to be difficult to talk to her privately, regardless of what he told Pfrann. It was going to be more difficult not to talk to her at all.

"Interesting…" Garak immediately caught the distortion in Dukat's voice pattern indicative of a universal translator in desperate need of adjustment, even if he missed noticing the strength of Dukat's grip, or the lengthy moment shared between him and Doctor Lange. 

"Yes," Janice smiled at Anon, acknowledging his brother over his shoulder. "You must be Pfrann…"

"Pfrann, yes."

The brother's voice was soft, the translation perfect. More importantly, Garak noticed how quickly Pfrann agreed with Doctor Lange's presumption of who he was. Odd, because Garak didn't recall anyone mentioning the younger brother, certainly not by name.

"And, of course…" Janice turned to Damar, a broad Cardassian similar to Anon, roughly the age of Doctor Bashir.

"Yes, yes, yes," Damar waved impatiently at her. "Legate Damar. Sit, young woman. Sit."

"All right, I'll sit," Janice shrugged, and sat.

She sat. Garak ogled her. Certainly there was an air of familiarity about the young woman in her approach; he had noticed that much earlier. And while a charming characteristic in a woman as young and attractive as she was, it wasn't necessarily a preferred attribute for a diplomat. Interesting because though a diplomat's chief purpose commonly was to invoke unity and accord between peoples, appropriate public etiquette demanded they hold themselves aloft. 

"Oh, Jeez…"

Garak likewise noticed how Chief O'Brien looked away, also apparently not quite sure if Doctor Lange's action of immediate compliance had been the smartest thing for her to do; certainly open to an interpretation of sarcasm, and therefore disrespect. 

Nevertheless Lange's obedience or defiance that may have momentarily surprised Damar as well was lost in the attention he was currently paying Garak from behind Worf.

"Garak," the Emperor said, the back or chest of a Klingon not quite broad enough to hide them from each other completely.

"An interpreter, perhaps, your highness?" Garak offered glibly. Personally inspired by Doctor Lange's actions. "I could be wrong, but I don't believe your representative's universal translator is working completely up to specifications."

"I like it when it doesn't work," Anon stepped around the luggage to claim possession of the unoccupied chair next to Janice.

"Oh? Why is that?" Garak's smile glittered with a particularly interested glance over the Gul sitting down.

"Privacy," Anon eyed Kira standing at attention. "You are Major Kira Nerys?"

"Yes," she agreed.

"My father sends his regards." He left her to mull that over while he pursued a study of Quark.

"Social Director," Quark offered. "Funny, I was just about to say you don't look anything like him -- where you do," he alerted the younger one. "Good, bad or indifferent, you do."

"The same old Quark," Damar's laugh was forced, his words an utter lie. He reached for the chair previously occupied by Kira. "May I?"

"Of course," Kira stepped aside.

And so they played musical chairs for a short while until everyone was seated, introductions made, the conversations limited and sporadic. One or two of them picking over their cold food while Damar busied himself with Sisko reviewing the security itinerary for the week; Federation and Bajoran Special Forces hurriedly assembled to form a protective shield around the area.

"What is in the luggage?" Anon solicited Janice with a flick of his head back towards the duffels as he sampled a cool crisp carrot from off her dinner plate.

A reasonable action, Garak surmised, considering the size of the entree, the Gul probably assumed it was there for the taking of anyone.

"Quantum torpedoes," Janice shrugged.

He laughed. He paused, and then he laughed, asking permission as he stretched for one of her canvas sacks. "May I?"

"Of course."

He flipped open the duffel tossing his brother one of the logs and keeping one for himself. "We do this also; Cardassians. Research for our platforms."

"Well, I should hope so," Janice leaned over to help him configure his access.

"No, I can do it," he stopped her. "Cardassian, Federation technology it's all the same."

"It's Bajoran."

"It's the same," Anon stuffed the log in her face. "See? Vedek Bareil. I can even read it. Tell me what this is instead," he held up the carrot. "Do you know?"

"A carrot," she nodded.

"A carrot." Anon challenged Quark. "How do you get it so crisp?"

"Trade secret. Ten strips and it's yours."

Janice laughed. "It's a vegetable. Not cooked."

"A vegetable?" Anon eyed the plate. "Whose is this food? Yours or the Klingon's?"

"Well, yes, it's mine," Janice agreed. "Why?"

"I thought it was his," he shrugged.

"You thought it was…" her brow wrinkled. "Is that why you're eating it? Because you thought it was Worf's?"

"Yes."

"But that's terrible!" she laughed again.

"No, that's terrible," Anon pointed out the gagh. "I'll have the same thing, without the gagh -- and, wait a minute, wait a minute," he stopped Quark before he took the plate away. "What's that?"

"Sand beetles," Quark sighed. "Ferengi sand beetles. By any other name, Ferengi caviar."

"Yes, all right, that's fine," Anon waved. "Same thing. Her, too. Bring her a new one. This one's cold."

"Well, wait a minute!" Janice stopped Quark. "Wait a minute!"

"Need I say why," Quark turned back with a roll of his eyes.

"You eat sand beetles?" Janice peered at Anon. "But you won't eat serpent worms?"

"You eat carrots?" he countered. "But you won't eat -- what's this?" he picked up the parsley.

"Parsley," she identified. "No, I won't eat it, that's why it's still there."

"I figured that out." he assured. "What's it taste like?"

"I don't know," she shrugged. "Taste it and see."

"Taste it. How do you know you don't like it if you haven't tasted it?" Anon scoffed, taking a handful and dismissing Quark. "You want to make a profit?"

"Come again?" Quark's lobes twitched.

"Wait on your customers." Anon tossed a twig of parsley to his brother, Damar's assistant Paq, as well as Damar preoccupied with Sisko's security log.

"Am I mistaken…" Dax leaned confidentially toward Kira.

"No," Kira answered, her arms folded, her face set as she slouched in her seat.

"Hm," Odo agreed behind them.

"Oh, well, I don't know." Bashir wouldn't be so hasty to presume Dukat was misbehaving for any particular reason. "I mean," he grinned for Kira and Dax skeptical to say the least, "if you're referring to a traditional Cardassian mating ritual, shouldn't Dukat be snarling, and sneering, and throwing chairs…" he caught a glimpse of Worf's eyes sliding to the side. "Rather like Worf?"

"Or throwing parsley," Dax nodded.

"This surprises someone?" Quark clomped by and down the stairs.

"No," Kira assured.

Sisko and Damar glanced up with the twig of parsley mysteriously appearing in front of them.

"Try it," Anon gestured to Damar's suspicious scrutiny.

"Yes, all right," Damar picked up the parsley with a sigh, his somber expression changing with first bite.

"Yes?" Anon said.

"Fine," Damar waved, resuming his conversation with Sisko.

"All right, go ahead," Anon nodded to his brother waiting.

"What?" Janice blinked startled with a scolding whack of Anon in his chest. "Why that's terrible!"

Garak inhaled sharply in shock, followed closely by O'Brien's groan. Kira, Dax, and Julian merely succumbed to staring.

"What's terrible now?" Anon laughed. "Someone had to try it first. Why shouldn't it be Damar?"

"Well, yes, I realize someone had to try it first," she nodded briskly. "That's not the point. It's parsley, not poison."

"It could taste poison," Anon shrugged with a grin for his brother. "You like it?"

"Yes," Pfrann agreed quietly.

Good," Anon promptly rose to bellow over the rail for Quark.

"Oh, Jeez…" O'Brien turned around in his chair for a pained study of Odo as Kira's face set harder and Sisko almost jumped out of his skin.

"You were saying?" Dax said to Bashir.

"Quite…" Bashir's dazed nod was slow.

"Um, hm," Odo agreed.

"Like father, like son," Dax settled back in her seat with a smile.

"You got that right," O'Brien sneered.

"Yes, you do," Kira assured.

"Well, why doesn't someone_ say_ something?" O'Brien insisted. "She majored in anthropology -- "

"Not sex?" Dax offered.

O'Brien looked at her. "He's Cardassian."

"It's pretty universal," Dax nodded.

"The practice or the method?" Bashir grinned.

"Excuse me," O'Brien stood up, once a father, ever a father apparently. 

However, Odo's hand pressing down on the Chief's shoulder stopped him from being that fatherly someone to intervene. Leaving it to Damar jumping to his feet with an annoyed and insistent, "Dukat!" 

Anon ignored Damar to the added confusion of everyone who hadn't been in the turbolift earlier for Sisko's lecture on appropriate public etiquette. 

Or almost everyone. Odo's gaze moved from Garak's bright eyes to settle on Doctor Lange pensively lost in thought. Suggesting to him she either knew little about Cardassian cultural antics as the Chief professed, or Commander Dax was right and the antics were universal. In any event it did appear as if she was diligently trying to figure something out.

"A way out," O'Brien assured. "She's no match for him. You know it. I know it. And he knows it."

"Yes, well, if that's true," Odo grunted, "I'd say not only Doctor Lange, but Shakaar has a problem on his hands."

"I have to agree with Odo," Dax admitted to Kira. "If she's going to be that easily intimidated I don't think the conference stands much of chance."

"If." Kira studied the young woman with her head bent staring at her feet.

"I think it was more just a natural reaction," Dax nodded.

"What was?" Kira looked up.

"The slap she gave him?"

"Oh," Kira said. "Yes, I'm sure it was."

"So then just how intimidated could she be?" Dax understood after thinking about it briefly.

"Exactly," Kira assured.

"Interesting point," Dax agreed.

"I mean," Kira gestured, "I really don't think Shakaar…"

"Would turn a kitten loose in a den of lions?" Dax offered.

"No," Kira was firm. "I don't think he would."

"Also an interesting point," Dax acknowledged.

"But?" Kira said.

Dax smiled. "I'm not so sure Dukat would have laughed if he didn't think Lange wasn't a kitten."

"Doesn't mean he's right," Kira insisted.

"No," Dax granted, "but it doesn't mean he's wrong either. Sometimes kittens do just respond out of reflex action."

CHAPTER NINE

Half of the cultural antics in the immediate area died down to a collective hush to stare up at the Cardassian Gul screaming down over the rail to the bewilderment of the public already intrigued by the walls of yellow armor strategically lining the section.

"What?" Quark turned back with a snarl.

"Make it five!" Anon instructed. "Same thing! Five people!"

"Why don't I just bring a tray!" Quark shouted back.

"A tray?" Anon thought about that. "You mean a big one?"

"No, I mean a small one," Quark scoffed at a nearby table full of patrons struck dumb even if they didn't recognize Anon as the Number One Son of his one and only, apparently not so one or only.

"Dukat!" Damar demanded.

"Shut up!" Anon turned on him with a snarl. "I can't hear the Ferengi if you're talking too!"

"Shut up…" Garak could feel himself swoon at all the possibilities such an open and obvious hostility could present.

He wasn't the only one. "Apparently there's no love lost between those two," Dax remarked to Kira frozen in her seat.

Sisko was far less impressed than his senior staff. "Gul Dukat…" his voice, quiet and emphatic penetrated the stunned silence.

For naught, Odo nodded. Dukat turned his back on Sisko as well to shout over the rail for Quark.

"Of course I mean a big one!" Quark hollered up as Sisko stood there, his face drawn and flush with fury, a melee moments away from breaking out.

"That was a mistake," Dax's spots flamed deep violet. Kira's knuckles white as she gripped the arms of the chair, a breath away from leaping to her feet.

"Actually, that's not a bad idea!" Bashir sprang to his feet, tripping O'Brien and colliding with Janice jumping up from the table with Damar's outraged reach for Anon that had Pfrann leaping to protect his brother.

"Janice!" Anon exclaimed as his brother toppled into Garak's arms, Janice sandwiched somewhere in the middle of them and Bashir in a tangle of arms and hair. A feat that was at least effective in bringing everyone else up short even if half of them fell down.

"Quite," Bashir grinned at Janice, attempting to ignore Sisko's blackened stare and Kira's coarse, "Bashir!"

"Are you all right?"

"A little startled, I'd have to admit," Garak answered from somewhere close by. "But otherwise unharmed." He collected himself with the assistance of someone -- Worf, he believed it was -- to flutter his smile over Julian and Doctor Lange, and, yes, Major Kira and Commander Dax, all embracing Dukat and his brother in a group hug. "The same, I trust, holds true for the…six?" he verified, "Of you?"

"Three," Dax smiled. There only to assist Kira and Worf with identifying and separating the bodies.

"As well as you?" Garak included Anon. An unlikely hero, but nevertheless valuable in preventing the group of them from plummeting over the rail entwined in that same tangle of arms and hair.

"What?" Anon said to Bashir, no doubt as confused to have found Julian in his arms, as he was confused to find…

Janice. Garak suddenly realized what he had heard Anon say, and what he said made little, if any sense at all. 

"No, not me." Julian was shaking his head. "Garak's asking if you're all right."

"Yes, of course, I'm all right," Anon diligently worked with Kira, Dax and Captain Sisko, Odo and three conscientious security officers to extricate his brother's banner snarled in Doctor Lange's hair.

"Yes, well, I think…" Bashir offered, an accomplished surgeon and therefore familiar with these types of intricate procedures.

"Don't touch it!" Captain Sisko and several others insisted in mutual agreement. 

"Do not," Worf added to that.

"Anything!" O'Brien upheld.

The Chief, Garak smiled, was obviously not as fortunate as the rest of them as he came away from Julian's acrobatic endeavor wearing Commanders Dax and Worf's gagh in an interesting motif on his uniform breast. The three security officers just kept working.

"Well, I guess that tells me," Bashir grinned at Pfrann standing there as patiently as one could expect under the circumstances. 

Eventually however sixteen hands proved better than two. The group disbursed, leaving the responsibility of plucking the remaining strands of hair left behind in sacrifice from the banner to Dukat and his brother -- and, yes, Garak noticed, Doctor Lange, until Anon waved her back to her seat. "No, it's fine, it's fine. Thank you."

"Enough for everyone," Bashir nodded as he got Janice's chair for her; really, she was a most trusting young woman Garak did have to say.

"What?" Anon's head snapped up from giving his brother's uniform one final review.

"Not your hair," Bashir grinned at Janice. "The meal. We'll just all share from the same meal. Humans call it breaking bread. A gesture of unity…And we certainly are all united; at least in an idea," he smiled at Anon's contorted and incredulous expression. One spreading throughout the group poised to take action, probably not against Dukat. "Even if we haven't agree upon the method."

"Oh, we're in agreement," Kira muttered under her breath. "Death."

"It's probably the only answer," Dax nodded.

"Hm," Odo agreed. 

"What's wrong with him?" Kira insisted. "Is there something wrong with him?"

"Julian?" Dax smiled.

"Hm," Odo agreed.

"He's talking about the conference," Pfrann explained quietly to Anon scowling at him.

"Yes, all right," Anon waved impatiently in unlikely understanding to Bashir. "What about the Klingon? Do you want Quark to include the gagh then?"

"I beg your pardon?" O'Brien blurted out, Garak's eyes glittered in appreciation of his and Worf's thoroughly understandable startled reaction.

"For two, please," Commander Dax exhibited her usual poise under pressure.

"For two!" Anon resumed bellowing over the rail for Quark.

"Did you ever have one of those urges to kill someone?" Quark halted with a sigh; a tray precariously balanced in his hand.

"He can't hear me," Anon shook his head at Bashir.

"No, he can hear you," Bashir promised, joining Anon in a shout that would wake the dead.

"Oh, Jesus…" O'Brien just turned his back on the lot of them.

"And that's before the kanar," Odo mentioned, not to exclude or excuse Bashir. 

"Kanar?" O'Brien groaned. "Oh, please."

"Make that two someones," Quark nodded at a table full of patrons no less startled by the sight of Bashir hanging over the rail, his arms spread in demonstration.

"A huge platter! And include the gagh for Worf and Dax!"

"Include the gagh," Quark nodded. "Five minutes ago they didn't want the gagh, now they want it again."

"What do you want to drink?" Bashir asked Anon. "Wine? Kanar?"

"Kanar?" Anon looked Janice up and down. "No, Janice won't drink kanar," he shook his head, but the was hardly the point. Yes, hardly the point at all.

Janice? Garak glanced at the parsley scooped up and dangling from Anon's hand.

"If she won't eat this, she won't drink kanar."

"Well, you never know," Bashir smiled.

"I know," Anon assured.

Do you? Garak regarded the Gul as confident as he alluded to being familiar. Are you? He wondered why.

"Fussy when you have a choice," Anon teased Janice with a laugh.

Is she? Garak ogled Doctor Lange who he would presume to be a woman remarkably unpreoccupied with trifles of any sort. He judged this, naturally, based on her appearance and their hour or so acquaintance. Certainly hardly qualified to suggest otherwise with such definition. 

"Who isn't?" Janice shrugged.

"That's true." Anon passed the duty of refreshments back to Bashir. "All right. Wine, kanar, whatever you want…" he paused in assuming his seat to eye Garak in an unspoken inference that perhaps he was not only as bold as he seemed, but equally as observant as some tailor.

"Enough for everyone," Anon tossed Garak the parsley while Bashir screamed "Quark!" out over the rail.

"Well, I'll be…" O'Brien whistled low as Garak's focus shifted from Anon to the parsley he held in his hand.

"And that's an olive branch," Bashir approved.

"What?" Anon said.

"Not important," Bashir approached Kira with a grinning whisper. "Did you see that?"

"Yes." Kira was no more impressed than Benjamin, O'Brien or Odo. Dax's attention was riveted on Worf and his equally uncompromising rigid posture.

"Oh?" Bashir's spirit of togetherness and intra-galactic peace wasn't necessarily deflated by a staunch critic or two. "Well, I thought it was an interesting gesture, at least."

"Interesting?" Kira seethed, far more than her sense of the agreed rules of protocol incensed. "Interesting? Her name is Doctor Lange! Not Janice!"

"What?" Bashir said.

"Dukat," Dax leaned over to confide. "Apparently you're not the only one who feels comfortable addressing Lange on a first name basis."

"Oh," Bashir smiled. "Well, no, I'm sorry, I didn't really notice. I was more preoccupied by you and Worf and the offer of gagh."

"It is an attempt at seduction," Worf assured, able to see the forest for his stomach, apparently.

"Of course it's an attempt of seduction," Bashir settled down, not really concerned about it or anything at all. "It's an attempted seduction of you, me -- and, well, obviously Janice."

"And that is reason for concern," Worf insisted.

"Oh?" Bashir chuckled. "Why? Are you about to crawl into bed with him? I know I'm certainly not."

"Neither is she," O'Brien scoffed. "Have some faith in the damn woman, is right, never mind him."

"Quite," Bashir pointed his finger. "What the Chief said. Have some faith in the damn woman, damn him."

"I'd have to agree with that," Dax smiled at Worf as well.

He sighed. "Jadzia -- " 

"You know as well as he does Cardassian mating practices are as specific as Klingon," Bashir interrupted. "Meaning flagrant even if your father didn't write the book."

Worf ignored him. "Doctor Lange's qualifications as an officer of the Bajoran government do not mandate she be familiar with every aspect of Cardassian culture."

"If they don't mandate she be completely familiar with Bajoran," O'Brien snorted, "I don't see how they could."

"Precisely," Worf maintained to Dax. "Chief O'Brien is right. She is Human. And he is, yes," he acknowledged somewhat begrudgingly, "the son of Gul Dukat. That is significant only that it is obvious in its extreme."

"In every way," O'Brien said. "He perches on a chair like some damn King."

"Yes," Worf agreed.

"And that means?" Kira said.

"It means," O'Brien insisted, "that if she's not in tears an hour from now, I'll eat gagh. He's trying to confuse her. His behavior has to seem to her to be somewhat _bizarre_ -- it's bizarre to me, for pity's sake. From Damar on down to Garak."

"Yes, well, actually…" Odo drawled.

"I know!" O'Brien sputtered. "It's intentional. Classic. He's his father incarnate. And that gives him an upper hand, or he thinks it does. Not to where she's going to wake up and find herself next to him with no idea how she got there, no. But, yes, in every other way, yes. The Consult!" the back of his hand clapped against Worf's chest. "He's working every angle he can think of to come out on top; he is!"

"Yes," Worf apprised Dax.

"I know she's twenty-four years old," Dax maintained calmly. "And if she doesn't know by twenty-four when someone is making an overture -- "

"I would be remarkably concerned for her mental health," Bashir supported.

Dax's eyes closed with a sigh. "Julian…"

"Well, I would," he protested to her pained look. "As a doctor, of course I would."

"I'm afraid I might also have to agree with that," Dax finally surrendered with apologies to Kira.

"Good," Bashir approved. "Because it's certainly quite obvious to me whose eye Janice is attempting to catch."

"Excuse me?" O'Brien gagged, no minor overreaction there. "Whose_ eye_ she is attempting to catch? Whose? Or should I bother to ask?"

"Mine," Bashir looked around for the wine and a glass, finding both surprisingly enough intact on the corner of the table.

"Yours," O'Brien preempted Kira standing there with an artery or two about ready to explode.

"Mine," Bashir wandered back. "As I said, fairly obvious to me."

"That's not what's obvious to me," O'Brien's hand connecting with Dax's reaching to collect a chair with a mind to park it and Bashir down in it for safekeeping. "You believe him?"

"Actually yes," Dax was sorry to have to say.

"Uh, huh. What happened to rule about no fraternization, or is that different if your _first name_ is Julian?"

"For a week," Bashir reminded. "Not a millennium. Certainly no harm after the conference with inviting Janice out for a harmless cup of tea. I seriously doubt if she's all that anxious to get back to unearthing some Bajoran belt buckle lost ten lifetimes ago. Even if she is, there's still nothing wrong with a day or two holiday?" he offered Dax the glass of wine with a smile for the chair. 

"He has a point," she declined pleasantly with a nod for O'Brien.

"On the top of his head," O'Brien assured. "The woman will be out of here at warp speed before he's finished asking her _to tea_ or anywhere else."

"Possibly," Dax agreed. "Still, it could be worse."

"They could both be screaming," O'Brien understood.

"They were both screaming," Worf contributed, deadpan.

"Actually, all three of them were," Dax laughed.

"Quark," Odo offered Worf's furrowed crest.

"Oh, please," O'Brien scoffed. "I stand a better chance…"

"Excuse me?" Kira strangled out.

"Well, I do," he insisted. "Excuse me, but you did notice that while the three of them were trying to out _crow_ one another, I was the one just sitting quietly by?"

"Yes, and?" Kira insisted.

O'Brien thought about that. "Yes, and some women like the quiet type," he concluded.

"If not the strong and silent type," Dax offered, a personal expert on the subject.

"You mean like Keiko?" Bashir grinned.

"Who?" O'Brien said.

"Your wife!" Kira snapped.

"Mrs. O'Brien," Odo clarified.

"What is this with bringing up Keiko every five minutes?" O'Brien demanded. "Because I'm married, I can't look?"

"He can look," Worf agreed.

"Excuse me a moment," Dax nodded to Kira.

"Jadzia," Worf groaned, "I simply meant…"

"The Chief has two eyes."

"Yes…" Worf hesitated. "He has two eyes…"

"Easily remedied," she promised.

"So it is," Bashir laughed. "In a fair number of creative of ways."

"Go ahead and laugh," O'Brien waved. "Like_ I_ said, have faith in the woman. In my opinion even being married I stand a better chance than you, or _Quark,_ orthat one."

"Well, Quark and Dukat are rather a given." Bashir discounted them the same as he discounted Garak or Odo, though not out loud. Sisko never even crossed his mind.

"And?" O'Brien said.

"And so are you," Bashir sat down. "So I guess that just leaves me."

"We'll see," O'Brien threatened. "What you think you have sown up in style, I know I have in experience."

"I beg your pardon?" Bashir paused.

"I said, we'll see," O'Brien assured, undaunted by the glances passing between the lot of them. "I'm forty-two years old, I'm not dead."

"You're forty-two years old and married, is what you are," Bashir corrected. "With two children, I might add."

"So?" O'Brien scoffed.

"So, you can't be serious," Bashir insisted.

"Oh, I can't?" O'Brien's head cocked.

"No, and he isn't serious," Bashir assured Dax. "He isn't," he maintained to Kira.

"I don't care!" she said. "That's enough, the two of you!"

"It certainly is enough," he agreed. "The woman is hardly some sort of prize to be won, or vied for…You're not serious, are you?" he frowned at O'Brien, really not sure if the Chief wasn't serious to an extent.

"May the best man win," O'Brien borrowed his wine glass to toast him with it before he downed better than a quarter of it in one swallow.

"I didn't think so," Bashir relaxed into a smile. "Quite all right. You can still be best man -- Godfather, also, if you insist. Garak, of course," he acknowledged as Kira snatched up his wine, but since she never did get her coffee, he could imagine she was thirsty for anything by this point, "might be a little put out…"

"What do you have?" Anon looked over Pfrann's shoulder to read the data padd while Garak thoughtfully studied the parsley in his hand, Bashir's conversation with the Chief inaudible except for an occasional laugh.

"Bareil," Pfrann answered quietly, evidently lacking that same appreciation Captain Sisko and Damar lacked for his brother's behavior.

"Me, too," Anon sat back down with a new and a potentially leading question for Doctor Lange. "Kira tell you about Bareil, how she knew him?"

"Adon did, actually, yes," Janice smiled.

"Yes, of course, Adon," Anon poured wine from another convenient bottle while waiting for something more agreeable to him. "First Minister Shakaar Adon of Bajor. He would be a sheep farmer, or something like that, if it wasn't for us. You know that? About the Bajoran caste system?" 

"Yes," she nodded.

"Of course you do," he reached to take the data log from his brother and toss it back in the duffel. "Something you find in agreement with the Federation Articles? This denial of personal freedom to be something other than what your family name denotes you to be?"

"Well, actually," Janice said, as Sisko and Damar glanced up, "what you're calling a caste system -- "

"No, of course, you don't," Anon stopped her. "I forget. You're a Neutral. You don't know anything about the Federation."

If she thought he was challenging her she was right. Not because he felt betrayed to find her sitting there in representation of Bajor, but because he continued to feel awkward and constricted by his inability to just talk to her without concern of arousing someone's suspicions. Their relationship and exchange had always been open and honest. Right now they weren't being honest with each other at all.

"Chapter One," Janice struck an amusing pose. "Purpose and Principles, Article One, paragraph three: 'To achieve interplanetary cooperation in solving intra-Galatic problems of economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character; in promoting and encouraging respect for intelligent life-form rights; and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to culture, sex, life-form, or religious belief'."

"Paragraph two," Anon applauded. "'To develop friendly relations among planets based on respect for the principles of equal rights and self-determination of intelligent life-forms.' Very good. What is self-determination to you? I am self to me. Defined as self, not you."

"The Bajoran society -- " Sisko interrupted quietly.

"Well, good," Janice interrupted him to extend her approval to Anon. "Because I am self to me. Defined as self, not you."

"And?" Anon said, as Sisko eyed Lange.

"And," Janice nodded, "if the Bajoran social system denies the fundamental freedoms by distinction on the basis of culture, sex, lifeform or religious belief…Or," she preempted him, "if it violates the equal rights or self-determination of an intelligent life-form, it would be in violation of the Articles of Federation Chapters One through and including Eighteen. Yes, it would be. Absolutely."

"So it would be," Sisko bit his smile at the oblique answer. "However, I think Doctor…"

"What does that mean?" Anon scoffed with a point of his finger in her face. "Bajor clearly employs the principles of a caste system in its treatment of the Bajoran-Cardassian population. Admit it. They are in violation of the Articles of Federation."

"Yes, Bajor does, and so does Cardassia," Janice smacked his finger out from in front of her face to point hers in his. "And, yes, that has to change. You know it, I know it, and so does the Federation."

He laughed. No one else did, but he did. "You're good. Very good. I look forward to the conference. It should be interesting."

"Well, I should hope so," Janice smiled. "I wouldn't like to think I've bored you already."

"No, I'm not bored. How could I be?" Anon rested back in his seat with a taste of the wine he did not like and a glance over his father's Nerys arguing with the Federation puppets O'Brien and Bashir. "Kira tell you how she was guardian for my sister Ziyal?"

"Your sister…" Janice repeated.

"Dukat!" Sisko and Damar both immediately barked. Kira jumping to her feet, aborting her dressing down of the Chief and Bashir to attack him. 

"What?" Anon was amused.

"You know very well what!" Damar's fist struck the glass tabletop rattling the plates and flat ware. "I will not have our position compromised simply because you feel like being clever!"

"You believe him?" Anon snickered to Sisko.

"Regardless," Sisko returned coldly. "Your question is inappropriate. The agreed protocol is emphatically clear on the issue of neutrality. The entire point behind Doctor Lange's assignment -- whose position," he advised, "I will not have compromised. Is that understood?"

"Neutrality," Anon scoffed. "Who's neutral? You? Or perhaps you?" he turned around to Kira. "The Klingon? The Changeling? Or maybe you two," he nodded at O'Brien and Bashir, "in your Starfleet uniforms? You just put them on tonight, or something? For the occasion?"

"Twenty-four years," O'Brien assured.

"Chief!" Sisko warned.

"He's trying to sabotage the damn thing before it's even off the ground!" O'Brien insisted.

"Let him!" Sisko said. "Lift a finger to help him -- any of you," he circled the table with his stare, "and so help me, you will find the UFP inquiry a picnic. Is that clear?"

"Well, no, actually," Janice spoke up. "I'm afraid it isn't. Not at all."

"A simple matter of genetics, my dear," Garak offered quickly with a smile for her as well as Captain Sisko momentarily taken aback by. "I'm sorry, Captain, but again, your request, really doesn't apply to me."

"Wanna bet?" Quark staggered up to drop a platter the size of someone's moon down on the table. "Not that I mean to interrupt."

"Not at all," Garak said. "As I was saying -- "

"On the contrary, Garak," Damar inclined forward with a deadly warning, "if you think your life is miserable now -- "

"Would be half-Bajoran, Doctor Lange," Garak offered Janice. "The sister Gul Dukat refers to. On her mother's side, of course."

"That's far enough, Legate," Sisko's hand clamped over Damar's wrist.

"Cardassia will not be held responsible for your little toad, Captain!"

"Then that's far enough," Sisko nodded. "Since he's my toad, and my responsibility."

"And?" Janice prompted Garak.

"And?" Garak paused. "And what, my dear?"

Janice sighed, turning back to Anon with a smile. "No, I wasn't aware of your sister. Is that why you are interested in the conference?"

"No, that is not why," Anon sat up straight with a snort. "That is why I was asked to preside, yes, of course. That, and the status of my father -- "

"I really don't know that much about your father either," Janice shook her head. "Well, I don't," she insisted with a gesture of her duffels when he slumped back in his seat to scoff. "I know who he is, of course; I've heard of him. But I certainly don't know anything about his personal life -- "

Anon stopped her. "I'm not going to argue with you, Janice."

"Well, good, because I'm not arguing with you."

"I asked you if Shakaar told you about Ziyal because I wanted to know the answer."

"And I told you no, Shakaar did not tell me about Ziyal, anymore than Kira did."

"No one believes that!" he loomed forward suddenly in her face, irritably excited. "Only they would rather sit and wonder about it between themselves. Try and figure out ways to gather the information without you being aware. From Cardassia, to Bajor, to the Federation; believe me!"

"What?" Janice said.

"Janice!" he groaned.

"Anon, listen to me," she requested. "Even if I say I believe you, I know I still don't understand."

"What?" he demanded. "What don't you understand? Your own neutrality?"

"No, of course I understand my neutrality; I am neutral."

"Of course," Anon nodded along. "And your ignorance of my father's notoriety further guarantees your unbiased participation in the conference."

"It does?" she blinked.

"It doesn't?" he challenged back.

"Well, I don't see why it would," Janice shrugged from him to Sisko; Damar to Kira. "How?"

"Ha!" Anon snatched up his wine. "You're right. It doesn't…." he eyed the glass he was drinking. "What is this stuff?"

"Root beer," Quark disclosed. "It's a preferred favorite among Humans. Ours is not to reason why."

"Why?" Anon insisted anyway. "It's disgusting. Where's the kanar?"

"Excuse me if I only have two hands like the rest of the bipeds I know."

"Who?"

"Let's try it this way," Quark said. "Think of the color yellow and tell me if you noticed the army at the foot of the stairs? Did you notice the army on the stairs? What about the forty-three guys behind you?" he wondered as Anon turned around to have a look.

"Of course I notice them. What does that have to do with the kanar?"

"Twenty minutes," Quark swore, "three checkpoints, four blood screenings, I'll be right back."

"Along with a partridge in a pear tree." Julian chanced Captain Sisko hanging him from the nearest Cardassian archway, boldly stepping to join Doctor Lange. Edging a chair between her and Dukat -- or at least as close as he could get to in between them without knocking Dukat off his seat since the Gul failed to oblige in making room.

Fascinating, Garak reiterated to himself. How utterly fascinating the evening had become. What could it possible, ultimately, all mean? What could it possibly?

CHAPTER TEN

"Captain…" Damar turned to Sisko with a melodramatic sigh.

"No, it's quite all right," Bashir petitioned the Captain for mercy. "Because, actually, yes, Dukat does have a point. Oh, yes." he brought the point of Anon's point to Janice's attention. "He's quite right. Who really is neutral? Certainly not I. And certainly not him."

"No," Anon thrust a glass of the brown wine forward; Bashir presumed as an offer. "I said that."

"Yes," Bashir accepted the glass with a smile. "I'm agreeing with you -- except as far as the wine." he passed the glass to Janice along with his smile. "It is root beer. Not wine."

"It's disgusting," Anon maintained to Janice.

"Apparently that means he believes you'll like it, since it's been decided you won't like kanar."

"No, she won't like kanar," Anon insisted. "That she might like, yes. It's sweet."

"Mildly tart, actually by our description," Bashir winked at Janice procrastinating in taking a drink. "I trust you have had root beer at some point in your life?"

"No," she admitted.

"Ha," Anon's knuckles cracked painfully against Bashir's arm. "So much for Human preferences."

"Favorites," Bashir rubbed his arm with a wince. "And it is. At least among Humans I know."

"Bipeds," Anon nodded.

"Yes, well, actually, biped means someone or something with two feet rather than two hands. Not that it matters really, because, yes, Humans are bipeds. The same as Ferengi. Cardassians," he offered Anon looking at him. "Bajorans. Klingons. So see? Just when you thought you had nothing in common, come to find out you do."

"Talk to me about my point," Anon suggested, "the one you agree with. Did I ask you to?"

"No. I simply do, that's all. Rather the same as I agree with Janice. You must feel some sort of personal tie to the conference with regards to Ziyal."

"Oh?" Anon sneered. "Why? Because she was my sister?"

"Yes," Janice nodded. "Of course because she -- _was_ your sister?" she frowned.

"Unfortunately Ziyal was killed during the recent Federation-Dominion war," Bashir quietly explained when Anon did not answer her. 

"Murdered, those more discriminating might say," Garak added with almost ghoulish delight.

"No, Ziyal wasn't murdered," Anon corrected in aggravation. "Executed, yes, for treason against the Cardassian Union…Which, no," he allowed, "was not entirely accurate because Ziyal's home world was Bajor. Not Cardassia."

"Another vicious lie, my dear," Garak promised Janice. "Ziyal was ardently loyal to Cardassia despite her mixed heritage. She simply disagreed with her father's actions as many others did. Myself included."

"Who cares about you!" Anon's angry swipe of his hand sent something flying; it turned out to be a bottle of kanar.

"Did you ever have one of those days?" Quark sighed to Sisko far too busy snapping his fingers at Odo to care.

"Yes," Odo supposed he should intervene before all hell did more than threaten to break loose again.

"An idea, Constable," Sisko nodded sharply with a caustic reminder to Damar of the rules of no-interference. "Don't even think about it; don't even think about it!"

"No, it's all right," Janice reassured Pfrann; Odo she didn't even notice. "I have him."

Which she did have Dukat. By the shoulders as a matter of fact as he jumped up and she jumped up. The same as Julian, Pfrann, and, yes, Damar's assistant Mister Paq, Garak believed was also there.

"Anon, listen to me," Janice coaxed him back down into his chair, not that she really could be expected to control him unless he allowed her to; and she couldn't control him. Not to the point of getting him to sit down. "I'm sorry. It's all my fault. I had no idea about Ziyal, none at all. And, yes, perhaps Shakaar should have told me -- "

"That's not the point," he said. "He cries for a woman who would be alive if she listened to my father instead of choosing him!"

"Also very true, my dear," Garak assured Janice smoothly. "I did have the distinct pleasure of knowing Ziyal for far too short a period of time."

"I said who cares about you!" Anon barked.

"Well, obviously your sister must have," Janice said.

"What?" his eyes flickered suspiciously over her.

She smiled, risking aggravating him further with the truth. "If she chose listening to Garak over listening to your father? Who was apparently her father too?"

"True," Garak purred. "As well as quite alive, quite unlike Ziyal, though currently serving a life sentence in a Federation institution for the criminally insane; not that miracles can't happen, because, of course, they can."

"My father is not insane," Anon assured Janice. "They might like him to be, but he isn't."

"Well, it's probably a matter of opinion if he's a criminal also." Doctor Lange held her smile, Garak noted, though it softened slightly, almost sadly.

"On the contrary, Doctor," Sisko stiffened at the outrageousness of her idea.

"On the contrary, Captain," Garak beamed, not meaning to suggest he agreed with Doctor Lange's rather flagrant and misguided generosity. "It is an opinion. Right, or wrong, it is. One of those notoriously accepted -- "

"Rules of protocol," Quark offered.

"Precisely," Garak nodded. "And the opinion of the winning side does have a tendency to prevail over those who lost -- at least in their opinion," he smiled at Janice, impressed by her courage regardless of how controversial, or inaccurate, her comment might be. Which it was. Controversial as well as inaccurate. Just ask Major Kira. 

"Is that what you think?" Janice was asking Anon.

"Actually…" Anar sighed to his sergeant Dak'jar safely in the background of the little group gathered in the Ferengi's gilded brothel to break bread; ground. "It's far more likely Anon is thinking of how to erase her name from the death warrant she just signed for herself by publicly upholding his father as some victim of unfortunate circumstances." The same as Sisko was thinking; the Bajoran woman who had to be Adon's Major Kira; the Changeling posing as some Constable Odo. All of them, including Mister Damar, confident Anon was confident to have won the first round even before the conference started. Janice's claim of ignorance concerning his father either a lie, or she was just somebody's fool. She was neither. Blessed, perhaps. Gifted with uncommon wisdom and foresight. Giving, caring, kind and gentle, if she was nothing else. "I owe you one," Anar cursed his nephew Shakaar for involving the child in any of this. "Oh, do I."

"Anon?" Janice said.

"I have already explained my position to you," Anon reiterated tightly, removing her hands from his tunic. "I am a dreamed political coup by Damar to glean sympathy for his ideas in Legate Dukat's absence."

"That'll be the day," Kira sneer retorted behind him.

"You think not?" Anon turned on her. "Even you and my father were united in one cause in your lives; Ziyal. You, a Bajoran militant. Him, the former Cardassian Prefect."

"Ziyal was your daughter?" Janice blinked at Kira.

A fair and reasonable presumption under the circumstances, Garak felt. No doubt causing Major Kira a fair and reasonable amount of momentary nausea at the very idea. "No, Ziyal wasn't my daughter. My charge, yes. Charge," she retorted, her anger hardly directed at Doctor Lange. Directed naturally instead at Anon and his idea that anyone could glean Bajoran sympathies under a banner scarred with the name Dukat. "Are you out of your mind? Tell her the truth! Your father was personally responsible for millions of Bajoran lives!"

"Meaning deaths," Bashir nodded to Janice.

"I don't care how many children he fathered! Or how many women he loved!"

"You counted them apparently?" Anon agreed coolly.

"Counted them?" Kira choked. "I didn't have to count them!" she grabbed him by his tunic with no intentions of ever letting go. "I stepped over them in the streets! Around them as he paraded them along the Promenade!"

"Odo!" Sisko insisted.

"Back to that united in one cause only," Odo suggested to Anon as he pried Kira loose with a nod for Doctor Lange and the return of her pensive expression. "As apparently you still seem to be confused by something. Or am I wrong?"

"No, you're not wrong."

"And neither is she attempting to seduce you!" Kira managed to give Anon one last slap before Odo remanded her for safekeeping to Dax and O'Brien.

"Give me a break!" Kira stood there spitting fury, unnecessarily straightening her uniform and smoothing back her hair. "Did you see the expression on his face? Did you?"

"I did," O'Brien assured.

"Yes, well," Dax just said.

"He thinks he's going to blame her! He does! You can see he does!"

"For?" Dax asked.

"For?" Kira sputtered.

"For," Dax nodded.

"For looking to beat him at his own damn game," O'Brien assured.

"Exactly!" Kira's hand caught him sharply in the diaphragm but he didn't care.

"She's good," he promised. "Mark my words. The kid can hold her own. I don't care what _Worf_, or anyone else says."

"Did you say Lange couldn't hold her own?" Dax smiled up at Worf.

He sighed. "Jadzia, the entire issue of seduction has become distorted."

"If not gotten a bit out of hand," she agreed. "The evening," she clarified.

"Yes," Worf said.

They were silent for a few moments waiting out the last of the roars slowly dying back down to a tolerable buzz.

"Hungry?" Dax wondered, gazing longingly at the extensive platter of food.

"Yes," Worf assured.

"Doctor?" Sisko attempted to keep patience in his question and a few choice words to himself as far as the blatant generosity she extended Dukat, barely shy of accusing the Federation of wrongful imprisonment of a man's whose record spoke for itself in any language.

"No, it's just…" Lange continued shaking her head at him, Damar, Odo, all of them, "I'm not sure why we're even discussing any of this. It has nothing do with why any of us are here."

"Come again?" O'Brien leaned into the conversation, not intentionally usurping Sisko's similar question.

Janice sighed. "We're not here to discuss anyone's roll in anything. We're not here to discuss the Federation-Dominion war, or the Klingon-Cardassian conflict, or the Cardassian wars…Or the Cardassian Occupation of Bajor," she apologized to Kira. "We're here to discuss the installation of a Cardassian Consulate on Bajor Prime to assist in ensuring equal rights and fundamental freedoms for the Bajoran-Cardassian people living on Bajor Prime and throughout her colonies. Regardless of how a population came into being, it exists. By approximation, represents almost thirteen percent of your combined worlds."

"And what about our combined worlds?" Kira charged. "The Cardassian Union has ignored their responsibility in every way. Now they're going to start telling us what to do? It's taken fifty years for them to acknowledge their existence! Never mind accept or provide anything!"

"A debate possibly for another day, Major," Sisko raised his hand. "Doctor Lange is correct. The issue we are here to discuss is the installation of a Cardassian Consulate. Nothing more. Nothing less."

"Yes," Janice's plea returned to Anon. "Yes. So, no, I can't see how my knowledge of…?"

"Tora Ziyal," he turned away with a disgusted wave. "Yes. Tora Ziyal. Her face wasn't enough. He had to give her a Cardassian name, too."

"Prejudices my position in any way," Janice smiled after him. "And I don't see where my knowledge of Tora Ziyal prejudices my position, in any way. What her story does is underscore a need. A need we are all already aware exists, or we wouldn't be here, would we?"

"How profoundly naïve of you, my dear," Garak was the only one who dared to touch that one. "Delightful, even. Charming."

"Oh, please," Damar sat down heavily, snatching up Sisko's security itinerary he had been attempting to review before all this nonsense about food, neutrality, Dukat… "Young woman," he slammed the padd down, "when we need you to fight our battles for us, we will employ you to do so. Until that time your duty and responsibility is to Shakaar. An adversary of the Cardassian Union, not an ally."

"No, you're wrong," Janice shook her head. "First Minister Shakaar wants this conference to succeed as much as you do."

"Does he?" Damar snorted. "Well, we shall see, won't we?"

"Yes, we will," Janice promised with her smile, looking to move onto a new and different subject herself with an attempted tuck of her mangled mane of hair behind her ear. "Well, now what should we all talk about?"

"The audacity of innocence, perhaps, my dear?" Garak proposed when even Julian appeared to be at a momentary loss of something to say.

"Naïveté," Janice laughed delightfully. "And, I don't know. Was it that same naïve quality in you that had you believing you could succeed as a tailor on a Bajoran station under command of the Federation?"

"Arrogance, of course, my dear," Garak sat down, inviting her to do the same. "You'll find the Cardassian race to be extraordinarily arrogant, if you find us to be nothing else…"

"Does that satisfy you, Legate?" Sisko turned to Damar.

"Me?" Damar sneered. "You're the one threatening your staff with court martial. My interest is not to have my proposal jeopardized by some -- "

"Toad?" Odo drawled. "Yes, well, I believe you'll recall in retrospect the one responsible for letting the proverbial cat out of the bag was your Gul Dukat, not Garak."

"Not that that should come as some great shock to anyone," he mentioned aside to Kira when he retired from the crowded spotlight to join her at a convenient side rail where they could watch the whole of the arena to their heart's content. "What was that you said earlier about just getting rid of one of them?"

"Only to end up with two," Kira muttered.

"Yes, well, I'm not so sure about two," Odo gave a nod towards Anon's rather silent partner, otherwise known as his younger brother, "but we definitely have one."

"He looks like him," Kira agreed.

"Who?" Odo said.

"Pfrann." Kira sipped her raktajino finally.

"Yes, well," Odo grunted, "I believe Humans have a saying…"

"Appearances can be deceiving," Kira nodded. "So they can be." Because the one who looked like his father, put aside the one who did not?

"He's nervous about something," Odo observed.

"Who?" Kira said.

"Pfrann," Odo assured. "The other one's just angry."

"Damar maybe?" Kira watched Pfrann indecisive in approaching his brother so obviously decisive about avoiding him.

"Probably," Odo surmised as whatever was driving the younger one won out over his apprehension and he took the necessary steps to secure Anon's somewhat divided attention divided between…Odo wasn't quite sure. Reasonable to say though Anon's attention was divided between not wanting to pay attention to his brother he was paying attention to in spite of himself and whatever it was he was thinking.

"Are you sure Dukat's the one who's angry?" Kira frowned, finding Pfrann's subdued mannerisms the ones remarkably similar to his father's flamboyant gesticulations when he was feeling particularly annoyed about something; impatient or frustrated.

"What would you say?" Odo grunted.

"Defensive?" Kira mused. "Defiant?"

"Defiant, maybe," Odo allowed. "Not defensive. Watch him when he walks."

"What?"

"It's a sight to see," Odo guaranteed.

"All right," Kira shrugged, "I'll watch him when he walks."

They were silent for a few minutes.

"Sort of saunter, I suppose," Odo considered.

"His father saunters," Kira nodded.

"You saunter," Odo assured. "That one struts." Fast and determined.

"Meaning?" Kira said.

"I wouldn't hold my breath, or waste it for that matter, hoping to persuade him from whatever it is he does have on his mind."

"So much for compromise," Kira proposed.

"At the very least," Odo agreed.

"What about the younger one?" Kira eyed Pfrann.

Odo thought about that. "I didn't notice." Only that he was young. Markedly concerned or worried about something. Probably Damar. Likely in regard to his elder brother who he was in love with. "He'll be a target," he promised, "Dukat. Guaranteed. Probably the first one. In whatever direction it comes from."

"I was just thinking that," Kira agreed.

"Before or after you were thinking about Lange?" 

"After," Kira admitted. 

"I'm sure you were," Odo nodded. "Part of Damar's plan, or not part of it, one thing is for certain, not too many people appreciate a rebel."

"You really think she's a rebel?" Kira frowned.

"What do you think?" Odo grunted.

"Well, maybe not a rebel exactly. If you listen to the Chief -- "

"She's a heroine," so Odo overheard.

"Right. Where if you listen to Dax -- "

"Who's hungry," Odo noticed. "Explains why she's back in the thick of things." 

"Lange didn't accuse of the Federation of anything," Kira assured. "Benjamin's just a little sensitive when it comes to certain subjects, and Dax is just a little sensitive when it comes to him."

"And you're not," Odo supposed.

"No, I'm sensitive. That's how I know she didn't accuse the Federation -- "

"Of wrongful imprisonment of an innocent man," Odo nodded.

It was like someone scrapping their fingernails across a pane of glass but Kira toughened it out. "She made a point," she maintained, firmly even. "A valid point. In Cardassia's opinion -- many of them, Dukat is not a criminal. In the Federation's, he is."

"What about Bajor's?" Odo asked.

"Could we change the subject? I mean," she scoffed with a supporting wave, "if we want to stand here and talk about _rebellious -- "_

"Dukat," Odo assured.

"Watch the way he walks," Kira reminded. "He's everything his father ever dreamed he was."

"Frightening thought," Odo had to admit.

"So it is," Kira agreed.

"I'm not so sure it's worth the risk." Odo studied the Legate who hadn't balked at killing one of them, and so it wasn't likely he would balk at killing two more.

"Also true," Kira believed.

"To Lange or Dukat?" Odo asked. "Or is it likewise unfair to your Doctor Lange to suggest that if Mister Damar and his entourage expected anything they probably didn't expect her? Meaning the woman just might be a little too intelligent and…" he cleared his throat. "Too much of a free thinker for her own good. If she's not afraid to speak her mind about Dukat, she's not likely to be afraid to speak her mind about anything." 

"I'll talk to Benjamin and get approval for Bashir to implant a proximity detector," Kira decided. "Rather than just the standard security bracelet."

"Which Dukat will either refuse or figure out a way to deactivate," Odo nodded.

"Then we'll just implant another one," Kira shrugged. "It's for his own protection."

"Which I doubt if he thinks he needs."

Kira looked at him, which was fine because he just looked at her.

"Watch the way he walks," Kira nodded.

"That's about the size of it," Odo grunted.

"Legate?" Sisko waited for Damar's decision to call, play or declare it a draw.

"Yes, it satisfies me, Captain," Damar sighed heavily one more time to ensure his resignation was heard. "If the woman wants to insist she is neutral, she is right in her claim she is at least as neutral as any of the rest of us; Dukat has a point."

"Of course." The ever malleable characteristic of Cardassian diplomacy seldom succeeded in amazing Sisko anymore. "Nevertheless, Legate," Sisko advised as he sat, "I would like that point to be included in the official minutes of the conference."

"Include it anywhere you like. You should know Dukat by now. He will agree, disagree, deny or acclaim, do either or all on a whim. If you think that one is any different, think again."

"His value, no doubt," Sisko was equally capable of deadpan sarcasm if he so chose to be.

"Value," Damar scoffed. "Dukat's value is exactly as he has defined it. The name. The identity associated with it. Again," the smile playing Damar's lips was thin, "no different than his father. A prostitute, is a prostitute, and that is a prostitute I have hired to do a task for me, regardless of how he views himself. You and I both know exactly who, and what he is."

Sisko studied the vulgar, angry face of the Cardassian Emperor. "Honesty becomes most people, Legate, I would have to agree."

"I had an idea you would appreciate it," Damar pushed aside the security log to secure his fair portion of the food that hardly appeared to be worth all the fuss or the wait. "Where's the kanar?" he demanded of Quark relaxing in a chair himself for some reason.

"What have you been?" Quark cracked. "Revolving through a different universe than everyone else? His regal Eminence threw it across the floor twenty minutes ago."

"That's the only bottle you have?" Damar retorted.

"No, it's not the only bottle I have," Quark mimicked, "these are the only two feet I have. Those stairs are a killer. You go up and down them twenty-six times with gagh, without gagh…Which, just for the record," his finger jammed down on the table in front of Sisko. "It'll be a cold day on Cardassia when you get me in one of those monkey suits. You listening? I don't care how many security checks, searches, checkpoints, _stairs,_ I have to go through, up or down, to turn a decent profit for the next week I am not wearing one of those suits. Trust me. If they don't know by now who I am, masquerading as a florescent sunflower isn't going to help them out…

"Which, speaking of stairs," he returned to Damar, "if you wouldn't mind including in your official minutes of record, I like my stairs. I love them. I love every step. Every platform on all three levels. Every cup, knife, fork, plate, and spoon in the place…" he picked up the parsley from off the platter. "Every twig of parsley -- which, by the way, is there for decoration. You're eating the decorations. But, hey. When on Mars, do as the Martians do. In the meantime, are _you_ listening_?_ I love my bar exactly the way it is, the way you see it right now. And I expect to find my bar, have my bar, looking exactly the way it is, the way you see it right now, on the day you warp out of here. Is that clear? Or is there something you need me to repeat?"

"_Kanar_," Damar's serpentine neck coiled forward.

"It's also a breath mint," Quark handed him the parsley. "Knock yourself out. I'll be right back with the kanar…

"Or in a reasonable facsimile thereof," Quark halted on the stairs with sigh, stopped by a Bajoran security officer much larger than any Bajoran or security officer really needed to be, and definitely not a yellow person.

"You know, I've been up and down here thirty odd times," Quark mentioned as he was scanned and scanned and rescanned, "and I've just one question to ask you. Do you really think you could find a Cardassian, Klingon, Changeling, or even too many Bajorans short enough to surgically alter to appear as Ferengi? Even if you could, do you really think they would leap at the chance?"

"Oh, I don't know," the Bajoran drawled, "do you really think there aren't any Ferengi in the Maquis?"

"Do I know you from somewhere?" Quark frowned. "Because if I do, I'll remember it. I never forget a face."

"That's good to know," Anar answered from behind his sergeant Dak'jar. Personally, also not one particularly fond of yellow however there was credence to that old adage when on Mars, do as the Martians do. If he wished to gain admission to the ranks of the elite Bajoran troops, and he did wish, the distinctive yellow jumpsuit, specific to the occasion, was the ticket in.

"Let him pass," he granted Quark passage, "he has been up and down enough for us to know by this point who he is."

"Smart man," Quark nodded to the big guy, "you should pay attention to your elders."

"Figure of speech," Anar stopped Dak'jar before he overreacted and all hell really did break loose. "He lives by his wits, it shows in his tongue -- is Janice's inhibitor working?"

"Yes."

"Good," Anar was relived. "Keep a sharp eye on her, anyway. The three of them. Anon. Pfrann. The others can take care of themselves. Never mind the Klingons or the Maquis, I trust Damar and that assistant of his about as far as I can throw them."

"About as far as Hawk," Dak'jar agreed.

"If he's here, I'll find him. Brothers are extremely difficult to hide from. Trust me on that one," Anar winked with a confidence he didn't necessarily feel, pausing briefly in his retreat to eye the Federation officers and Cardassian civilian talking with Janice. "Who are those four sitting with Janice? Assistants?"

"Federation representative Chief Engineer O'Brien." Dak'jar identified the older of the two Humans who looked as if he was as strong and solid in his convictions as he was in his frame. Years of experience supporting the suspicious scowl on his face. "The one with the Trill Dax is Doctor Bashir."

"Explains the mood," Anar smiled at Anon's sullen expression. "Bashir is a handsome man. Even by Bajoran standards."

"He's Human," Dak'jar shrugged. "It's to be expected."

"So's Anon; humane, at least. Probably in more ways than he would care to admit. Who did you say the Trill was? Dax? Curzon Dax? Shakaar must be screaming contamination as we speak."

"Jadzia Dax," Dak'jar agreed. "Appointed Head of Security for the Bajoran Representatives. The Klingon is assigned to preside over the Federation."

"Make that Damar steaming," Anar whistled in the direction of Sisko. "Clever, Captain Sisko. Extremely clever." Independent, even. The Klingons were there regardless. Well, they were just going to have to keep a different sort of attentive eye on Sisko as well, weren't they?

"The Cardassian is Garak," Dak'jar was continuing to nod.

That was a name Anar knew. Obsidian Order. Luckless son to its butchering master Enabran Tain. Oh, what a tangled web of intrigue sat woven around that table, Janice unwittingly in its heart. If Anar was angry with his nephew, he was also somewhat agog with trying to understand Shakaar's thinking; by the Federation, half facetious, and half strongly impressed. "This Captain Sisko really isn't one for taking any chances, is he?"

"Old habits die hard," Dak'jar reminded.

"So they do. As do old soldiers seldom die…As it is better the devil you know, then the one you don't…." Anar shook his head. "I've been with the Federation too long. It was time to come back to the Prophets."

"Most of its common sense," Dak'jar agreed.

"So it is. Keep a close watch over our Mister Garak also. I doubt if he'll give Anon any particular trouble, but neither can we have him waylaying Damar in an ore bay…" he peered at Garak. "As much as we might like to…What's that he's eating?"

"Parsley. The Humans use it for a breath mint -- if you believe the Ferengi."

Anar chuckled. "He should give it to the Klingon. I'll be -- "

"Around?" Dak'jar suggested.

"Lying in wait for General Martok," Anar promised, that time with complete confidence. "Date, time and place are not a secrets you can keep for very long even when your name isn't _Legate Damar!_" His eyebrows raised in facetious exaggeration. "They've been here an hour, I give Martok another two."

He was close.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Anon found himself pushed farther and farther into the background. First usurped from center stage by Garak elaborating on his choice of career change, and then by the Federation moving in. Closing in. Surrounding Janice. Surrounding their own.

"Quite simply, it was inconceivable to me that I would not succeed," Garak confided to Janice.

"Sounds like a few Humans I know," Dax's head popped up over Bashir's shoulder.

"Oh, yes," Garak agreed. "Also an extraordinarily arrogant race, I would have to say."

"Not mentioning any names," O'Brien's chair grated across the floor to come to a rest at Janice's side. 

"Under any particular set of circumstances," Dax nodded to Bashir.

"All right, all right," he threw up his hands in contrived surrender with an equally contrived grin for Doctor Lange. Really, in some ways Julian put the most ambitious efforts to shame. A reason perhaps why Garak found himself upon occasion just absolutely adoring him, there were no other words to describe it. "Who they're referring to is me."

"You?" Doctor Lange had no idea why, naturally, how could she?

"And what we're referring to, of course," Garak, as naturally, took it upon himself to be the one to tell, "is Julian's most intriguing tale of a former acquaintance with you, to put it delicately."

"Love affair," Dax informed, "to put it bluntly."

"Love affair?" Pfrann was this close to securing his brother's divided attention only to have it whisked away in an instant. He sighed. Anon stared at the table, not that far in the background not to be able to overhear.

"Love affair?" his disbelief turned on Pfrann.

"Yes, and?" Pfrann sounded like that impatient O'Brien. The one with the irritable disposition, talk about surly Cardassians.

"What do you mean, yes, and?" Anon's fist struck Pfrann's banner. "That's my question of you. Yes, and? Yes, and, what Pfrann?"

"What do you expect me to say to you?" Pfrann snapped.

"Nothing!" Anon assured. "Don't say anything to me. Don't talk to me."

He stalked away. As far into the background he could get without following the Ferengi down the stairs, to watch the glittering panes of the mirror balls turning slowly overhead the stepped display of Quark's private dining booths, reasonably secluded from one another by their intermittent towering walls of glass.

"Anon…" Pfrann had this irresistible desire to drive him as insane as their father.

"Would you have a love affair with that Human?" Anon insisted. "Would you?"

"What?" Pfrann looked across their dining area to Bashir.

"I didn't think so," Anon pronounced satisfied when Pfrann looked back at him. "Neither would Janice. He looks like you; a child! He looks like one of these!" his fingers clamped over the rail with enough strength to rip it apart if he felt so inclined. "A pole! What are you going to do with something like that? Nothing! That's what you're going to do with it."

"I can't talk to you," Pfrann decided with a disgusted wave.

"Don't turn away from me!" Anon grabbed him. "What do you want to know? I love her? Yes! I told you so. Is that what concerns you?"

"Of course that's what concerns me!" 

"Why? I thought you liked her?"

"Like her," Pfrann groaned. "Anon, it's not a question of me or anyone else liking her!"

"No. It's a question of me loving her, which I do. Don't worry about it," he let Pfrann go. "Janice, or anyone…Including Dukat. He'll like her, too. If only because she is attractive if he can't think of another reason."

"How can you say that?" Pfrann choked on his anger.

"Because it's true," Anon shrugged. "I didn't say I agreed with it, I don't -- And I'll tell him that, too," he assured. "Make an advance toward her and I'll kill him. What do you think?"

"About what?" Pfrann requested coldly.

"Janice!" Anon snapped. "You know what! Is she attractive? Not to you, to them; the Humans. I already know she is attractive to me."

Pfrann didn't know. He gazed sullenly back to Bashir and O'Brien. "I guess so. That's what they said. You heard them."

"Heard them," Anon scoffed. "I don't care what I heard. They could say anything. That's just all part of their mating rituals."

Pfrann's head snapped around to stare at him like he had lost his mind. Anon sighed. "Mating rituals. Yes, they have mating rituals, Pfrann, like Klingons. Specific rituals. I looked it up. Watch them. You'll see what I am talking about."

"I don't want to watch them," Pfrann hissed. "You want to, go ahead!"

Anon laughed. "What's the matter with you?" 

"Nothing! I am not the one researching Klingons and Humans…"

"I wasn't researching anything," Anon assured. "The data simply said 'Humans have specific mating rituals similar to Klingons.'"

"So what!"

"So I had a few questions," Anon shrugged, "that's all. Why?"

"Why?" Pfrann spit.

"Yes, why!" Anon's fist caught him sharply in the chest again. "Why are you asking me such personal questions? What's the matter with you?"

"I'm not asking you," Pfrann insisted. "You're telling me; and I don't want to know!"

"Good! Because I'm not telling you."

"Good," Pfrann clutched his head because if he had his father's affected mannerisms, right now he also had one of his father's headaches.

"So what do you think?" Anon grinned.

"Think?" Pfrann gaped at him.

"About Janice," Anon nodded. "I think she's beautiful."

Dukat ducked his brother's playful swing. That was Odo's interpretation from where he stood across the private dining area, but only because Anon was laughing. 

"Love affair?" Janice blinked at Bashir hiding his smirk behind his hand and two pink cheeks.

"Oh, yes," Garak purred. "So tell us, my dear, confess…"

"Where were you on the night of…?" O'Brien sought assistance from Dax.

"Pick a year," Dax was open. "Any year."

"2364," O'Brien nodded.

"23…64?" Janice echoed.

"Age eleven or twelve," Dax offered. "Or thereabouts."

"Actually, I can explain," Bashir assured Janice's wide eyes turning on him.

"I'm not so sure I want you to," she started to laugh.

"It's perfectly harmless, really. You weren't eleven. You were twenty-one. It was our third year of medical school together. A wonderful six months. And then you broke my heart."

"You turned twelve," O'Brien nodded.

"Actually what you did," Dax smiled, "is accept your doctorates in paleoanthropology and forensic sciences and leave Starfleet medical academy to pursue a career in archeology."

"That is what I did," Janice agreed.

"Oh, I know," Bashir said. "The only irony is, apart from I always thought you would make a wonderful doctor, you aren't you."

"Oh, no, my dear," Garak supported, "quite obviously you are not. Who you are, of course, is Doctor Lange."

"Doctor Janice Lange," Bashir nodded.

"A different Doctor Janice Lange," O'Brien clarified.

"Oh, yes, absolutely," Garak gushed. "Julian just naturally assumed what with your name and your doctorates you were his Doctor Janice Lange. A thoroughly reasonable presumption. I would have likely made the same error myself."

"Even though what we all truthfully believe," Dax confided, "is that Julian has been spending too much time in the holosuites and needs to be desensitized."

"Well, it's hysterical either way," Janice endorsed the humor of the story, taking it all at face value.

Dax's concerns resurfaced; she wasn't quite sure why. Lange's trust and acceptance of Julian and his tall tale was a far cry from upholding someone like Dukat. There was no point to Lange instead having been offended by Julian. No reason for her to think of a potentially malicious reason behind the story. Was there?

You're becoming jaded. Dax scolded herself, unfairly, harshly. Her instincts gnawed at her, insisting danger was imminent. Lange was much more than simply too good to be true. She was a professed pacifist, ardently liberal in her viewpoints. 

"But is it true?" O'Brien pointed.

"Is it?" Janice asked Bashir.

"Cross my heart," Bashir swore. "Is your story true? About the hair?"

"Definitely," Janice's head bobbed up and down like a wild and glowing bush, enticing her audience.

"I'm not so sure if that's good news or bad," Bashir grinned at Dax lost in thought. Included in those thoughts probably things like he didn't take Lange seriously anymore than the Chief really did. An adorable kid, a beautiful and charming young woman. The fact that Lange had entered Starfleet medical academy on an accelerated program at only age sixteen probably scored few points, if any, with either of them.

Dax was right. It didn't; at least as far as him. Bashir wasn't there to compare intelligence quotients, he was there to have fun, and he was having fun.

So was the Chief. Garak quite obviously as well. Regardless of whether or not anyone else was. Janice Lange would at least have a few memorable moments of just plain _fun_ to take home with her rather than simply an exhausting week of overstuffed shirts barking accepted rules of protocol at her every other sentence even when she did agree with them.

"Kira…" Dax ignored Bashir's waiting grin to head back in the direction of Kira, her thoughts racing.

"Quite," Bashir shrugged, turning to look up into Anon's growl, growling down on him. "Yes?"

Only the growl turned out to be the grating of another set of chair legs being drawn across the floor as the chair was yanked up and dropped down, Anon in its seat.

"Oh," Bashir smiled across to, rather than up into the glittering red eyes of Anon busy hitting himself in his head with the heel of his hand for some reason. Bashir's smile dipped to a curious frown.

"Your medical screening," Anon insisted impatiently. "Can you understand me, or can't you?"

"Perfectly," Bashir nodded as Quark took advantage of Anon's flailing hand, flailing in his direction to clap a fresh bottle of kanar into it. "There's definitely a distortion in your translator's pattern output -- but that could just very well be your own voice coming through. I'm afraid I don't normally hear most people's actual voices. Similar to yours, my universal translator is more concerned about interpreting what's being said…

"Still," he speculated while Anon eyed the bottle of kanar he found in his hand, "if your translator isn't working to your liking I'm sure there's a far better way to improve the quality, other than by hitting yourself in the head."

"I enjoy it," Anon assured.

"The quality of your translator?" Bashir hazarded. "Or hitting yourself in the head? I'll take it to mean you mean your translator," he nodded to Anon's tired look. "I believe you mentioned something along those lines before."

"I did," Anon yanked the stopper out of the bottle to pour himself a glass. "Now talk to me about what you mentioned before."

"The medical screening?" Janice contributed when Bashir drew a blank.

"Oh, yes," Bashir believed he had it. "It's really quite simple. As I was explaining to Janice earlier…"

"I know all about it," Anon interrupted. "I'm not asking what, I'm asking when."

"Oh. Well…" Bashir imagined, "any time really…"

"Now?" Anon handed Janice the glass of kanar.

"Now?" Bashir paused. "Well, yes, I suppose that's also possible…Why? Do you have a particular reason for asking?"

"No, I don't have a reason." Anon encouraged Janice to taste the kanar. "Try it. I tried your root beer, you try my kanar."

She grimaced. "Do I have to? I'm not so sure something that looks and smells so awful is going to taste anything but awful."

"Like your root beer," Anon laughed, taking the glass back. "No, you don't have to drink it."

"Oh, good," she appreciated it.

So did Garak; Anon's laugh. It must have been the third or fourth time the Gul had laughed that evening. Each time bright and cheerfully. Open. Honest. Garak thought of a Klingon proverb cautioning never to trust someone who smiled too much. That was interesting because to a Cardassian, a smile meant the same as it did to a Human. Contentment. Satisfaction. Internal pleasure often derived from or by external factors.

"What?" Anon's pleasure did not necessarily extend to Julian.

"Oh, nothing, really. Just that medical screening."

"We have our records," Anon assured.

"Oh, yes," Bashir had no doubts they did. "As required by the Federation."

"You have our records," Anon watched Janice struggling with the root beer. He laughed again. "What's the matter with you? You really don't like root beer either? What kind of Human are you?"

"Yes," Bashir nodded. "I mean no," he shook his head, "we don't have your records. But then we didn't even know who you were until a few hours ago. Even still," he picked up his wine with a smile, "I doubt if we'll discover anything too dramatic…"

"Rigelian fever," Anon tossed off like it was a common cold.

"Rigelian…" O'Brien echoed as Bashir choked on his wine.

"Fever," Quark snatched Anon's glass of kanar away. "Now you tell me." 

"Did I look dead to you?" Anon retorted.

"No," Bashir swallowed painfully. "But that's hardly the point…"

"Really," Garak regarded Anon like he had the plague, which, of course, was what he had. Doctor Lange, however, appeared to be in agreement with Anon. 

"You too?," she said amused. "So did I. Last year."

"I beg -- " Bashir's tearing eyes blinked at her. "I beg your pardon?"

"From the Klingons?" Anon nodded knowingly to Lange. 

"Well, I don't know if it epidemic was due to the Klingons. I hadn't heard that. But, yes…Didn't you hear about it here?" she questioned Bashir.

"Well, yes, actually. I'm sorry. I just never connected…Of course," he dropped back in his seat with a groan. "The outer colonies. What was I thinking? I wasn't, quite obviously."

"Yes, that was it," Anon agreed with Janice. "The colonies. My brother, too. My crew. Eight months ago. Two months your friend Shakaar held my transport hostage with his stupid quarantine, and then he asks what we are doing there."

"Well, it wasn't so stupid now was it, if you contracted Rigelian fever?" O'Brien returned harshly.

"And what were you doing there, Gul Dukat?" Garak spoke up. "I mean, surely you aren't suggesting First Minister Shakaar did hold you actual hostages?"

"Have you ever had Rigelian fever?" Anon sneered.

"No." Garak likewise expressed little regret for never having had the experience. "Though it is my understanding without the antidote it's fatal."

"Occasionally with," Bashir stood up. "So much for my thinking I'd have you all out of my hair within an hour. Between Rigelian fever and DNA inhibitors -- "

"Proximity detectors," Kira appeared at his side with a request for Sisko's attention. Something Bashir already had secured, along with Legate Damar's.

"DNA inhibitors?" Damar glared at Sisko. "What is he talking about?"

"Relax," Kira said, "it's the least of your concerns."

She took a breath while Sisko tried not to notice Dax putting a bug in O'Brien's ear about something. "Major?" he waited.

"Yes," Kira nodded. "Security's been fielding a lot of questions as we anticipated -- It's not a problem," she moved quickly to put down any immediate cause for alarm.

That was reasonable, Sisko concurred because he had an idea Kira was lying, exaggerating at the very least. Why? Risky, if Damar asked for the missing details Kira was taking pains to avoid. Sisko felt his attention wanting to stray back to Dax with the Chief.

"But Odo would like to order proximity detector implants for the Committee staff…" Kira explained.

"Really," Damar smirked. Suspicious? He was almost amused.

Kira stayed a step ahead of him. "We don't feel it's necessary for you, or your assistant. The standard security bracelet should be fine. If there's going to be a threat, it's probably going to be against the conference committee."

"There's just one problem with that, Major," Sisko fell neatly into step as devil's advocate.

"One problem, Captain?" Damar demanded; his amusement short lived.

"Beyond having to obtain an individual's permission." 

"Lange," Kira was aware.

"We risk offending her neutral status, Major," Sisko nodded. "I simply can't allow it."

"You may not have to. She has a DNA inhibitor implant."

Sisko was startled. Immediately apprehensive and concerned. His annoyance with Shakaar renewed. A DNA inhibitor would raise questions and doubts with him -- it did raise questions and doubts with him. He ogled Lange and the beguiled group of men surrounding her. If there was a snake in the garden, it was supposed to be Dukat; Damar. Not Shakaar.

"Of course," the palm of Damar's hand struck the table in disgust. "Well, while that might explain who we're talking about, Captain, it certainly doesn't explain why."

"Bajor signed a no resistance agreement with the Dominion," Kira reminded him coldly. "The Federation did not."

"She's neutral, Major," Damar sneered back. "As neutral as you or I."

"She's Human," Kira insisted. "Living a light year from here on the border of Cardassian and Bajoran Space. I'm not suggesting we grant her immunity, I'm saying the implant isn't necessary -- with the disruption of her DNA sequencing it's questionable as to whether or not it would even work!"

"Which we will not even attempt. My decision stands, Major," Sisko settled the matter. "The standard security bracelet will be used for Doctor Lange…As far as the other members of the committee staff…" he looked across the table to Dax nudging the Chief in his ribs. "Ladies and gentlemen, if I could have your attention for a moment, please…"

"Proximity detectors?" O'Brien echoed, no obvious prompting there. Odo rolled his eyes as Dax bit her smile. "Well, heck," the Chief scoffed, "what do I care? Do you care?" he asked Bashir.

"Care?" Bashir's brown eyes blinked wide. "About implanting proximity detectors?"

"You don't care," Dax shook her head.

"Yes, of course I care," Bashir protested. "And I'd like to understand a little bit more of the reason why."

"Security," Anon snorted. "Why do you think?"

"And I would think you would also," Bashir replied, a distinct, cool edge to his tone. "I'm sorry, have I confused which one of us is Cardassian?" 

"Oh?" Anon said. "Why?" he closed his eyes, promptly proceeding to describe the color, size, and position of every article of food on Quark's tray even if he didn't know what half of it was. As well as the precise location of everyone in the dining area, their distance from one another. The dimensions and decor of the section. The number and exact angle of the stairs leading down and around; the stations of the security teams.

"Cardassians have a photographic memory," Garak apprised Janice, per chance she was not aware. "Myself included, naturally. Beyond our immediate surroundings, Gul Dukat can quite accurately describe for you the structural layout of the Promenade and everything he has seen since boarding the station. And while that might seem an entertaining parlor trick, my dear, I propose you consider the value, or danger of him aboard the bridge of a battle cruiser -- someone's other than his own…Or for that matter on Ops." he smiled at Sisko.

"Something which in turn explains why we'll be meeting in a converted cargo bay," O'Brien cracked to Janice.

"He's joking, of course," Bashir reassured her. "Who isn't is Garak. Yes, Cardassians do have a photographic memory. Far beyond being able to recall a stroll along the Promenade. I'm sure if you ask Dukat, his encounter with the Klingons and subsequent bout with Rigelian fever is -- "

"Like yesterday." Anon's eyes sank deeply into Janice's, ignoring Pfrann's uncomfortable shift at his side. "I remember it all; everything."

"Really," Garak cooed. "That's most interesting. Oh, yes, most interesting, definitely, Gul Dukat."

"He remembers it mentally, anyway," Bashir nodded to Janice. "And possibly to a degree emotionally," he winked in spirited jest. "But then the Cardassians have this _passion_ for exacting revenge; Klingons themselves among us mere men."

"I wish I was still there." Anon assured Janice.

"There, you see?" Bashir smiled. "Straight from the horse's mouth. Though, still, I wouldn't consider his penchant for violence any cause for immediate alarm; you're not Klingon. Not even Bajoran…Or for that matter," he teased, "Federation. If I was at a loss to understand Shakaar's frame of mind when he employed you, and I admit I was at a loss, I think I'm beginning to understand now…"

"Oh, yes…" Garak said. "And, of course, oh, no, Julian's quite right, Doctor Lange, we are a thinking species; violent, though thinking. Capable of reasoning, not mere instinct; obsessed with reasoning, I would have to say," he smiled, upholding Julian's notions of the similarities and dissimilarities between the Klingon and the Cardassian races. Not to say Doctor Lange appeared alarmed, or concerned in anyway to find herself in the company of cannibals and psychotics. In fact it was remarkably generous of her to smile so brightly in return at the professed driven and violent Gul when she was such an ardent pacifist.

"I can understand that," she answered Anon's voiced desire of wanting to turn Time back to a past and different day.

He almost forgot himself. Who he was, who she was, and where they were. Only this time instead of his brother tripping him in the mud along their trek through Janice's grotto, Pfrann just stepped up, reaching between them for his share of the platter of food. "You say that now, then you were glad to leave," Pfrann's voice was soft as it was usually soft. His molding in the image of his father generally restricted to his features and mannerisms. As was his idol worship reserved for his brother, so unlike his father in every way.

Anar slowly released the breath he was holding. Brought back to their section on the run much sooner than he anticipated by the increase in simmering tension, his departure had been delayed the second time by Anon's mention of the Rigelian plague.

It was delayed a third time by…

"As a matter of fact, I have a photographic memory myself," Bashir nodded to Janice.

A disclosure, Garak highly doubted, Julian felt necessary out of any feeling of inadequacy put alongside the power of the Cardassians surrounding him. There was certainly no reason why Julian would ever think he might actually be in competition with Dukat, of all people, and of, course, Julian was not. No, Julian simply had by nature -- or the equivalent -- a highly competitive streak to his personality. Really, it did seem how after more than six years, Julian still couldn't decide if he had more fun being obnoxious, or playing the role of the kindly and caring station physician. Another one of those reasons Garak just so absolutely adored him.

"He has a what?" Anar paused on the stairs.

"Photographic memory," Dak'jar scoffed.

"Oh?" Anar gave this young Doctor Julian Bashir a second, curious look, wondering if there was something he had missed the first time. "Is there a reason we should care?"

"Apparently he does."

"Yes," Anar gathered that. As apparently Bashir was confusing Janice with one of the Ferengi's hostesses; which Anar wouldn't. For reasons other than who he called daughter, he embraced as a daughter. He eyed Anon, his uncharacteristic honesty as much his Achilles heel now as it had first shone itself to be. It was to Anon's benefit, Janice's as well, Bashir's talents did not include emphatic ability.

"You should care as much for yourself," Dak'jar practiced reading his thoughts.

"Yes," Anar supposed he should. A reason perhaps to why he was leaving. But then no one needed a photographic memory or emphatic ability to notice the striking resemblance between some Bajoran Special Forces officer and Shakaar Adon of Bajor, given the opportunity; which they wouldn't be. 

CHAPTER TWELVE

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"Oh, look at you!" Convulsed in laughter Janice hung onto the knotted and gnarled arm of an ancient river tree. Anon rose from his unexpected bath to kneel in the brick red mud staring at himself.

"I'm sorry," Pfrann winced.

"Sorry?" Anon echoed. "Look at me!"

She was. Janice. Laughing almost uncontrollably and contagiously as she hung onto the crooked and cruel tree whose exposed heavy roots Pfrann claimed to have tripped over. Not so much in an effort to stay abreast of his brother, but a step ahead of the banked glint in Anon's eyes watching the bouncing mass of hair in front of them.

"What do you mean look at me?" Anon started to laugh, scrapping a handful of the thick dripping mud from his tunic and flinging it at her. "Look at you!"

"Hey!" Janice blinked at the primeval splatter hitting her in the shoulder.

"No, hey," Anon assured. "How do you like it? What about you?" His next handful caught Pfrann in the chest.

"Don't ask," Janice advised Anar halting in pacing the town center, attempting to convince himself he was not concerned over Janice's agreeable accord with Anon's demand to see the grotto where she found her mummy. The first words out of Anon's mouth once back on his feet from his bout with Rigelian fever. 

In place of a thank you, Anar imagined. Still, he wasn't concerned. Or at least not as concerned as he would have been two weeks ago if Janice decided to take off on an all day hike with Anon and his brother.

"All day?" Anon's training in field maneuvers apparently had not included the Infantry. "Are you crazy? I'm not walking anywhere all day."

"We're not using the transporter," Janice refused. "I don't care if it works."

"It does work," Anon insisted stubbornly. "Yes, it does. Communications, weapons, everything. I didn't crash, I landed to repair the engines."

"Explains why the ceiling's sitting on our heads," Janice nodded around the engineering compartment with its winking, blinking lights and angry static rolling through three quarters of the displays.

"No, it isn't," Anon disappeared under a collapsed support beam in search of his transporter console.

"Anon!" Janice followed him. "It's radiation. I don't care what you call it, it's radiation!"

"Radiation," Anon scoffed. "There's no more radiation than you standing here, or sitting on the bridge -- "

"Dolores wasn't sitting on a bridge!" Janice gasped. "She was buried in a primeval swamp for four thousand years! You don't have any idea what all your isotopes, anions, cations -- "

"And I suppose there's no radiation in that sterile field she lives in now?" Anon reappeared behind a ruptured air conduit dangling from the ceiling like a giant, steel snake.

"That's completely different," Janice shoved the swaying conduit out of her way.

"Janice!" Anar reacted too late to do anything other than grab her and dive for cover as the heavy conduit swung freely, disrupting the precarious balance of the mountain of debris stacked like a house of steel cards.

"Anon, you don't know what you're going to do to the area, you really don't!" Janice pleaded when the noise and the dust finally settled and the sparks stopped flying and Anon stared from his ceiling to…

What had once been his transporter console, Anar nodded. Now buried under an avalanche of electronic trash.

"Well, you don't," Janice shrugged when Anon didn't say anything. "I don't."

"No," Anar cleared his throat as Anon looked at him. "Janice admits her limited understanding of quantum physics…" 

"Dolores?" Anon interrupted, puzzled, and Anar paused.

"I named her after my aunt," Janice nodded proudly.

"Yes," Anar cleared his throat again when Dukat's quizzical look returned to him. "Out of fondness, I would also assume." Despite the mummy's withered appearance.

"Extreme fondness," Janice gave the console a final boot in the isolinear rods with her foot. "So if you think you're going to jeopardize her grotto because you're too lazy to walk, think again."

"All right, fine, we'll walk," Anon surrendered like he still had a choice, and in his mind he probably did. "We'll walk," he assured his brother standing there silently throughout the debate.

"Good." Janice reflected on the new and different arrangement of their surroundings. "Can we get back out that way?"

"_No!_" Anon's face loomed in hers, and so he wasn't not his father entirely.

Janice laughed. "All right. Can we get out that way?"

They could, and they looked fine when they left. Upon their return however they were a sight to see.

"I'm afraid I might have to ask…" Anar disagreed with Janice's suggestion, staring at the three of them stained and caked with dried river mud.

"It's Pfrann's fault," Anon claimed, taking no responsibility at all.

"Pfrann…" Anar's question held as much disbelief as the look on his face moving to stare at the accused child.

Anon groaned heavily in complaint. "Yes Pfrann. Why does it have to be my fault? If the sun refuses to rise in the morning are you going to come looking for me?"

"Probably," Anar admitted.

"Smart man." Anon laughed, leaving Anar with a souvenir hand print clapped on his arm as he walked away, his brother following him.

"You would?" Janice remained behind to pout.

"Probably," Anar admitted again. But then for all the dissimilarities that separated the young Gul from his father, he was still his father's heart. Simply unaffected and unencumbered by living the last thirty or so years wallowing in greed and every other conceivable physical pleasure and vanity.

"Janice…" Anar hesitated, feeling inclined for the first time to offer a few cautious words of advice. But then that was the first time the thought had occurred to him that Janice might have been so eager and willing to show Anon the grotto because she really wanted to.

A thought probably drawn from nothing more than the simply wretched condition of the child's hair; one to be expected. She was wearing it lose, as she had been wearing it the last week or so since Anon's delusions of Klingons passed away with his fever.

"No, you wouldn't," Janice decided with a laugh and took off on a run to catch up with Anon and his brother, leaving Anar free to continue or end his silent debate.

"She's of age," Anar finally turned to the wisdom of the Prophets. There was no denying the child was of age, as there was no denying the aura -- he stopped short of calling it charisma -- surrounding Anon Dukat.

Impatience surrounded Anon at the moment. Disdain. He woke up from his daydream to sneer at Bashir. "You have a photographic memory?"

"Well, yes, actually," Bashir smiled. "Among many other heightened senses and capabilities. I'm genetically enhanced."

Anar almost fell down the stairs. 

"Genetically enhanced," Dak'jar offered dryly to Anar's neck snapping back around in shock.

"Oh, please," Anar collected himself to groan. What was it about young men and bars and young women… "Call me only if they draw blood; a lot of blood…Enough to make a Klingon squirm," he smiled to his son, Sian moving up to claim his father and get him out of there. "Any luck?"

"No. If we're here, I don't recognize any of us."

"Them," Anar corrected. "A choice made when they left the camp to the mercy of the Klingons."

"I have the same mercy for them," Sian swore bitterly. "Hawk struts like a whore across the graves of his own."

"He always did. Had I the foresight of a Prophet I would have strangled him in his crib."

He turned to melt down the stairs, on through that blinding faceless sea of yellow Shakaar had so unconsciously, thoughtfully provided for him. His passing figure, the subject of only a glance or two for his tipped white head, much to his son's relief.

"Your arrogance can be alarming."

"My arrogance is earned." Safely outside on the Promenade Anar reactivated his field unit, determined to locate his wayward brother before Sisko and his station fell victim to some nightmare. "Unlike your uncle's. If the Cardassians had to miss one of us, is there a particular reason why it had to be him?"

"Destiny," Sian shrugged.

"Sheer luck," Anar opted to concentrate on the ore bays. "Destiny is your beginning and your end, nothing more…Unless you walk with the Prophets. Hawk walks with no Prophet you or I have ever met."

His son looked at him.

"Recently," Anar admitted. "Yes, recently. We knew them once ourselves; now we are smarter. As today Hawk is ours, though only to stop. His fate belongs to the Prophets," his hand hit the field unit, encouraging it to work harder, faster. Grateful his son knew his father well enough not to question should fate find Janice a victim of Hawk like the hundreds of them before her? What then?

"Genetically enhanced?" Anon's retort to Bashir's announcement was snide. 

"Yes, actually," Bashir was undaunted. "Though, no, it's not something I normally talk about…But since," he smiled at Janice and everyone else, "we are talking about things like proximity detectors and DNA inhibitors, I thought it was best to be honest myself before we all start accusing each other again…"

"Uh, huh, uh, huh," Quark's face bobbed into view. "Blah, blah, blah…Top this," he challenged Anon with a flick of his mighty lobes. "Three levels down, six stations away, there's a brunette about to made an offer she will find difficult to refuse."

"The check," O'Brien butted in. "Excuse me, but what the hell does any of this have to do with -- "

"DNA inhibitors," Anon picked up his fork to help himself to dinner with a wave at Janice. "He's talking about you. Tell him. You live in the outer colonies and he looks about as friendly as a Klingon. He'd have one too."

"Proximity detectors," O'Brien finished tightly. "Do you mind?"

"No, I don't mind," Anon shrugged. "You want to have one. Have one. You, too," he assured Bashir. "So when someone tries to steal your positronic brain Sisko knows where to find it."

"Genetically enhanced," Bashir corrected. "I'm not an android. And, no, I also beg to disagree. I am not inclined to recommend a proximity detector for anyone, including myself. There is a marked difference between security and martial law. As there is a marked difference between paranoia and precautions. We are at peace -- for the moment anyway. Not at war."

"Odo's recommendation is restricted to the committee staff, Doctor," Sisko advised quietly, moving onto Janice. "Excluding you, Doctor Lange. To suggest a proximity detector implant would be in direct violation of your neutrality. I have already denied Odo's request on your behalf."

"Oh," Chief O'Brien said. "Well, do _you care_ on_ your own_ behalf?" he asked in marked emphasis for the benefit of the dueling duo over here trying to _out flex_ each other. One of whom should have enough _brains _to figure out the _why_ and _who _behind the request for proximity detectors without someone having to draw him a map.

Namely one Gul Anon Dukat. Garak had no difficulty in all appreciating the why and the who behind the request. Of course, it would never occur to Chief O'Brien the reason why he might be sitting on the sidelines scowling and intermittently snorting his opinions into the conversation, beyond that innate mistrust of the name Dukat and anyone associated with it, was because he was sitting on the sidelines where he would remain. By virtue of his age, his marital status, his _fatherly_ status, and, yes, that did appear to annoy the Chief. Garak believed he might notice this. 

The same as he noticed this Gul Dukat was not a lecherous middle-aged man leering over some pretty young child who happened to catch his eye. To the contrary, this Gul Dukat was a young man. A few insignificant months _younger_ than Doctor Janice Lange. And he wasn't leering, he was talking. Somewhat clipped. Short. Occasionally impatiently, always emphatically. But did anyone else see that? No. Garak highly doubted if they did. They saw Gul Dukat. A man they all knew. One they were all far too keenly familiar with to see anything or anyone else, at his leering, lecherous best as always. Astounding. Garak was amazed. He was simply amazed to find the color canary yellow was not the only thing blinding to the eye. 

"Not in the least," Sisko assured O'Brien he was not opposed to accepting a proximity detector.

"Nor I," Kira asserted.

"Neither am I," O'Brien shrugged again.

"Gul Dukat?" Sisko requested.

"Whatever you think is necessary. My brother agrees," Anon wasn't interested enough to look up from his dinner. A thoroughly wise precaution Garak felt because should the assembled group of enemies stop paying attention to themselves long enough to pay attention to him a valid question or two might be raised rather than the stock and tiring clichés.

DNA inhibitor? Garak maintained his study of Anon because unless his own training was faulty, he really did not recall Cardassian abilities to include psychic ability. The conversations surrounding Doctor Lange and her DNA inhibitor took place perhaps fifteen minutes _before_ Damar arrived with his entourage, not after.

Even though, yes, it was also entirely accurate to say Julian had mentioned DNA implants less mentioning any names, and therefore it was reasonable Anon might have just assumed Julian meant Doctor Lange.

Especially since Major Kira had mentioned Doctor Lange specifically in her disclosure and following brief debate with Legate Damar over the value and need for ordering proximity detector implants for everyone but him. And, so perhaps then the answer to the appearing mystery was simply that Anon was paying far closer attention to Damar than he alluded to be paying. He was certainly paying extraordinarily close attention to Doctor Lange in a manner so remarkably civilized and unCardassian that the full significance of it was likely to continue escaping everyone far more simply annoyed that he even dared to speak to her at all.

But why speak, if he wasn't his father? Why speak if he wasn't Cardassian, which he was. A people synonymous with deception. Gul Anon Dukat did have to be up to something, even Garak respected that given. So much so that he believed he might have an idea of what. Why. And, of course, who.

Oh, yes, if wasn't for that innocent gesture of Anon's indicating Doctor Lange's right lower arm, rather than her left, rather than her upper, rather than her brain, to be the location of her DNA inhibitor safely hidden beneath her long sleeved tunic, Garak just might go right on believing in assumptions and presumptions…

And coincidences, my dear. Garak's focus shifted briefly from the glittering red eyes of Anon to the downcast green ones of Doctor Lange. From the Bajoran outer colonies to the Rigelian plague. DNA implants to parsley to kanar and the suggestion of knowing each other's food preferences, to that earliest notice of how they had an occasional tendency to call each other by name. These two people knew each other. And they didn't just know each other, they were _involved_ somehow with each other. Not necessarily as lovers, though Garak wouldn't rule out that possibility entirely. There was a distinct note of protection in Anon's offered explanation behind Lange's implant. A thoroughly unnecessary gesture on his part, potentially unwise.

Unless, of course, there was someone other than him also paying far closer attention than they pretended to be doing. Someone such as Legate Damar. Or that remarkably silent assistant Mister Paq that even Garak had forgotten about until now. Then Anon's gesture of protection could take on a whole new meaning, such as a warning.

"Really," Garak eyed the still figure of Paq sitting attentively as his master's side. Ten years older, ten years wiser than the youthful Legate Damar, he was also ten years more experienced in dealing with any Dukat.

"So much for that part of theory," Odo muttered to Kira while the respective groups collected themselves to begin the parade to the station Infirmary.

"If he attempts to deactivate it we'll know," Kira shrugged. "That's all I care about. That, and no one gets hurt."

Dax left O'Brien with an appreciative pat on his shoulder to join Worf collecting Lange's duffels. "It sounded good," she smiled in support of Kira and Odo's belief Dukat would refuse a proximity implant unless trapped into agreeing. "Who knew Julian would be the difficult one -- don't answer that."

"It is tempting," Worf was ready with another sigh. "As I maintain the entire issue of seduction has been distorted by Doctor Bashir and Chief O'Brien. I did not mean to imply an attempted personal seduction of Doctor Lange by anyone. My concerns are with ensuring the integrity of the conference. In any other matter I am confident Doctor Lange can take care of herself. To suggest otherwise is to suggest because she is female she is weak, and that is not correct."

"Explains the duffels," Dax nodded.

Worf thought about that. The two duffels slung over his shoulders.

"I'm in charge of security for the Bajoran side," Dax hinted sweetly with a coy wrinkling of her nose. "You're in charge of security for the Federation. Those are Bajoran."

Worf continued to think about that. The two duffels slung over his shoulders. "If you insist."

"I insist," Dax said.

"As you wish," Worf surrendered the responsibility of the duffels to her, slinging them off of his shoulders and up onto hers.

"Need a hand?" Bashir grinned as she stood there, rooted in place, feeling her spine slowly being crushed under the oppressive weight of the canvas bags.

"No," Dax shook her head. Somehow the Chief interpreted that no to be a yes.

"Genetically enhanced? That's quite a risk to take, isn't it?" Janice rose from her study of the table to look past Anon's scrutiny to Chief O'Brien rather than Bashir. Garak could understand why. The poor child probably didn't know where to look. Reasonably, painfully torn between trying not to pay attention, when what she wanted to do was pay as ardent attention to Anon.

"Don't look at me," O'Brien joshed with a shove of his chair into the table. "I'm just an ordinary mortal the same as you. I leave the Kahns to the Kahns. The automatons to the automatons…And the fellows with the big heads and bigger ears lobes to the fellows with the big heads and bigger ear lobes," he finished his analogy with Quark.

"Uh, huh," Quark sneered. "Sounds like jealousy to me."

"Yeah, right," O'Brien scoffed. "I'm jealous."

Of the Kahns. The automatons…

"Automaton?" Janice repeated uncertainly.

"Machine," O'Brien assured, meaning Anon. But then he was hot. He would probably remain hot for the week until the guy left. "Anyone who can see 300 meters across a room, around corners and through walls is a machine. The only thing that separates him -- you," he pointed at Anon, "from the Borg are the implants. And you know, the same as I know, if we take you apart you've got more than one of them in there. So give her a break about some damn DNA inhibitor that no one cares anything about."

"Wait a minute," Janice shook her head.

"Yes." Sisko walked up quietly behind O'Brien. "That's enough, Chief. No one has accused Doctor Lange of any impropriety."

"Out loud, you mean. In the meantime, he's the one who's been in quote, 'rigorous training' since he was three years old."

"Four, actually," Garak politely corrected. "Even a Cardassian, Chief O'Brien, has a childhood, however briefly."

"Whatever. Photographic memory, my left foot. It's induced."

"Induced?" Garak gasped. "Oh, no, hardly…"

"And that's a machine," O'Brien assured, reaching to take one of the duffels from Dax. "From his photographic memory, and not ending with his infra-red magnifiers… Give me that. Give it to me."

"What is he doing?" Kira sputtered to Odo. "What is he doing now?"

"Yes, well…" Odo said.

"Oh, for!" Kira threw up her hands.

"Will you just give it to me?" O'Brien insisted to Dax. "You can't carry both of them. There's no reason for you to even try."

"Chief," Kira said at his elbow. "Chief!" she snapped.

"What?" O'Brien snapped back. "The hell with the damn protocol of who's who and who's not who. They know what's in there, everyone does. Data logs," he yanked the duffel off Dax's shoulder, feeling his back jerk under the unexpected weight. "About a half a kilo of them," he straightened up with a grin. "Wow. Like I said. I leave the Kahns to the Kahns and now I know why."

"Yes, well, that's probably punishment enough," Odo headed down the stairs; a subtle hint there might be a few other people who might like to join him?

"Chief?" Dax suggested before he ended up in the Infirmary all right, in traction.

"I've got it," O'Brien assured. "I've got it. Just give me a minute." 

"One minute," Sisko gave Dax one his subtle Benjamin nods. The kind that suggested whatever it was, it had all better be resolved within a minute. Quietly, to boot.

"Got it," Dax promised.

"Thank you," Sisko said with a gesture to Damar of how the stairs were there for the taking. "Legate?"

"Yes, yes." Damar collected his data, his assistant, with a short and emphatic word for Anon and his brother as he stalked by. "Dukat." 

"I'm pretty sure that means he'd like you to join him," Dax smiled at Pfrann. He ignored her. She wasn't surprised.

"Infra-red…" Doctor Lange was blinking rather innocently at Anon.

"Oh, no reason to be alarmed, my dear," Garak quickly, and quite nicely intercepted that pass thrown by the Chief. But then he was somewhat of a romanticist at heart he did believe. Intrigued, not offended by what could very well be a young and budding romance needing to be nurtured, not torn apart -- out of spite. Yes…Garak's eyes slithered over Janice. It was highly likely some of the Chief's annoyance was drawn from pure spite. But then this elder brother of Ziyal's so unlike his father could turn out to be identical to his father after all.

"Alarmed?" Janice said to Anon. "Well, no, I'm not alarmed…"

"Well, good," Garak cooed, "because, yes, as Chief O'Brien suggests, the Cardassian eye is extraordinarily light sensitive. In turn, the term magnifier does suggest an expansion of the eyes' range of sight and focus, yes, it does. As together those two concepts would prove contradictory to each other in our case. Necessitating a form of shielding, and well as preservation of the expanded capabilities of the eye which would include, yes, the ability to see not only in light, but in the dark…Why, my dear," he wondered, surprised, "what color did you think his eyes were?"

"Red," she said, almost sadly.

"Well, they could be…" Garak mused, narrowing his own expanded focus to scrutinize Anon's pupils. "Yes, they could be. Either that or green. Yellow -- as with his brother. They are rather brilliant, aren't they? And so, no, the magnifiers aren't necessarily masking the natural color, they could very well be enhancing it."

"They're red," Anon assured Janice, pointed to make a point, not with intentions of being rude toward her. To the contrary, his accompanying motion appeared to be a polite reach for her duffels that he had apparently not noticed Chief O'Brien to be holding out of pure stubbornness rather than super-human strength. He noticed now, ogling the Chief. "They're living about twenty years in the past."

"Eight months." Chief O'Brien bit that same bait of winless banter he accused Julian of foolishly falling trap to. "So excuse me if I don't invite you to dinner."

"Well," Bashir offered with a flash of his grin and a healthy deep breath, "that certainly is a relief to know. Not the part about dinner, his eyes," he clarified for Janice for no reason other than he was determined to remain _the _focal point of her attention beyond the conference, throughout the week. "Really, I maintain what shouldn't have taken more than an hour or two at most is now liable to go on all night. Though it's probably more of an insult to suggest the _sons of Gul Dukat_," he threw in with a little accompanying animation, yes, he certainly did, "aren't automatons. I'm sure it's not only expected, but mandatory. Certainly nothing, to take offense over. You're not offended, are you?" he paused suddenly, sensing some sort of discomfort about her.

"Offended?" Janice repeated, even though no, she wasn't offended, or at least she didn't think she was. Confused, yes, Garak perceived she seemed to be extraordinarily confused for some reason.

"What's the matter?" Anon answered her look with a coy suggestion. "You think I bleed like you?"

"Bleed?" she glanced at his chest -- or perhaps his shoulder. Garak was uncertain. Whichever, she focused her attention on his tunic for a moment or two before she smiled, offering one more time that familiar claim of knowledge. "Yes. I know you bleed."

"That's true," Anon said simply and turned for the stairs, his brother accompanying him. Kira caught up with Bashir, Garak and Lange at the bottom.

"What do you think you're doing?" her brusque question was for Garak.

"Why, whatever do you mean?" Garak blinked in surprise. "The plight of the Bajoran-Cardassian orphans is one thing, Major. A woman's dress size is quite another. Surely you can't expect me to pressure Doctor Lange with such personal questions in the middle of a public bar, can you?"

"I'll get her dress size for you!"

"Yes…" Garak eyed Julian's diligent efforts to do the same as he and Doctor Lange walked on, along the path carved through Quark's second level by Captain Sisko's army of yellow statues; all at attention, and of course in place. "I've no doubt you will at least try…However, no offense to either your or Julian's abilities but I'm afraid the answer is no."

"Excuse me?" Kira said, predictably argumentative when no argument was warranted.

"Though you're welcome to bear witness," Garak promised smoothly. "Both you and Commander Dax to insure no impropriety."

"Better idea." Kira turned for Chief O'Brien uncomfortably stalled on the stairs and just about to say something like: "Do you mind?" 

Whether Kira did or didn't mind was not the question, and therefore not the answer. "Give me that!" she yanked the duffel from O'Brien's bowed shoulders. It hit the floor at Garak's feet with a crash. "Pick it up!" she encouraged him. "You can commiserate to his heart's content with Bashir's medical console."

"On the subject of small versus medium versus very, very, heavy and large," Dax nodded to O'Brien.

"I was just trying to be polite," he insisted. "The damn things weigh a ton."

"Half a ton," Dax imagined to be closer between the two of them. One duffel, however, while not a breeze, was manageable. "Ready?" she smiled at Kira.

"Yes, well, that very well may be, Major," Garak still protested. "I've no doubt I can obtain the information I need from Julian's screening to ensure a proper fitting, but that still doesn't tell me what the young woman needs."

"Everything."

"Everything?" Garak repeated. "That's rather a large order to fill this time of evening, isn't it? She's not going to be with us overnight, she's going to be here a week."

"I'll take care of whatever she might need for the night. You worry about tomorrow, and tomorrow you can worry about the rest of the week."

"Well…" Garak reached for the duffel with a sigh.

"I insist!" Kira snapped.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Damar parked himself firmly beside Garak at Bashir's main console in the station's Infirmary with a pasty smile for the display readout that wasn't reading anything; he had a reasonable idea as to why. "Now all we have to do is find her."

"What do you mean find her?" Kira sputtered. "She's right -- right -- " she peered at the screen.

"Over there," Garak agreed. Sitting as comfortably as one could expect anyone to sit on one of Julian's examining beds. "I wouldn't be alarmed. The Occupation has only been over eight months and Chief O'Brien has done remarkably well in working to reintegrate your Federation matrix with the station's Cardassian systems. The medical banks are no exception."

"It's not the matrix," Kira slapped him out of the way with a call for assistance from Dax. "Dukat wouldn't have known what to do with a medical bank if it was sitting on his lap."

"That's one way of putting it," Dax's smile joined her along with Benjamin's frown.

"Anon…" Pfrann took immediate advantage of the opportunity to worry his brother about the issues of Rigelian fever, Bajoran outer colonies, and transport crashes on remote home worlds.

"I told you what to do, Pfrann," he said. "Avoid their questions until I have had the chance to instruct Tan to purge the files."

"The logs are a matter of record. Not only aboard the Tir. But here. With the Federation. Bajor. _Home!"_

"My life is a matter of record, so is yours. As my wife, Janice is your sister. Do it. That's an order."

"What?" his brother's voice fell softer than a whisper.

Anon shrugged. "You keep insisting I am our father, I keep trying to tell you I am not." He left his brother standing there in a daze, moving to join Sisko and his puzzled group of self-appointed engineers at the medical console.

"Yes, I realize that," Bashir walked up to Kira with a laugh and a wave of his equally useless tricorder. "I'd say it has something to do with the seating of her implant, but I don't think that's it."

"Well, what it is?" Kira insisted. "We never had the technology…"

"To make yourself principally invisible?" Garak agreed. "Oh, yes, Major, I would have to concur. Otherwise chances are our Occupation of your world would have taken a somewhat different turn, fairly early on…You disagree apparently," he acknowledged Anon's snorting contribution behind him.

"Yes, I disagree." 

"Yeah, well, given your father's penchant for fighting windmills, I'm not surprised," O'Brien pardoned his way through the crowd to have a look. "Do you mind? I mean, I am the _Chief_ Engineer."

"And I'm the Chief Medical Officer," Bashir revised a few of his configurations to compensate for the computer banks' momentary inability to coherently assimilate the data. "Notwithstanding everyone's interest, I still have a job to do beyond embarrassing my patient…There you go," he smiled as Janice slowly took shape on the screen. "Intruder alert, you might say. I simply say unknown entity or mass. Sixty-seven percent water. Twenty-six percent additional fluids. A liberal sprinkling of common salt, a dash of hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon…"

"And a rather interesting version of a DNA inhibitor…" Garak eyed the minute device visible as well.

"Oh, yes, that is interesting, isn't it?" Bashir agreed after a look. "Never seen one quite like that before…"

"Cardassian," Anon scoffed again. "It's Cardassian. Holographic transmitter, not a DNA inhibitor."

"I believe he may be right," Garak apologized to O'Brien. "The same as I am confident you'll find Doctor Lange's program to be contained within the root directories of her device, rather than amplified by an outside source…"

"Major?" Captain Sisko interjected.

"It's there," Kira said. "She's projecting a holographic field…"

"Again, if I may, Major…" Garak begged interrupting.

"It isn't projecting anything," Anon assured. "It's emitting a signal for your sensors to lock onto. They are interpreting the data of the program."

"Precisely," Garak smiled at Sisko. "How else would you explain Doctor Lange's ability to confuse not only Klingon or Cardassian scans, but also Federation? You may recall Gul Dukat employed a similar tactic…"

"Twenty years ago," Anon reminded O'Brien.

"On the contrary," Garak corrected, "three years ago when he defied the Civilian Council's order of no engagement and left with Mister Damar to do battle against the Klingon Empire…"

"And the Dominion," Kira sneered, remembering it all right.

"Also quite true, Major," Garak said. "Who knew where that liaison would lead at the time, you're right."

"As it is accurate," Worf said, "to say the holographic technology Dukat employed to deceive the Empire into believing he was Klingon, was Klingon."

"Only because the holographic transmitter available to him was Klingon," Garak maintained. "The technological concept, I insist is Cardassian."

"It's Cardassian," Dax nodded to Sisko.

"Regardless of its 'conceptual' origins," O'Brien assured.

"Of course," Damar's heavy hand waved its way to capturing Sisko's attention. "So now you are thinking what, Captain? The woman is our spy rather than Shakaar's?"

"On the contrary, Legate, I am thinking nothing of the sort," Sisko answered quietly, his hand out toward Odo in a request to review Doctor Lange's medical screening from Bajor.

"Yes, it's documented," Odo grunted in compliance. "A holographic transmitter of Cardassian design used in the manner of a DNA inhibitor. The Council of Ministers collectively agreed it would be a gross violation of Lange's neutral status to order the implant removed or deactivated…supported by the fact that she does reside in the outer colonies on the Cardassian border," he added for Kira's satisfaction and benefit.

"A matter of opinion, Constable," Sisko scanned the data.

"I beg your pardon?" Bashir startled. "I mean, I refuse -- Well, perhaps not refuse, exactly," he cleared his throat under Sisko's stare. "But, yes, it would be a gross violation of anyone's neutrality. The woman isn't hiding anything. It's not only documented, it's right there for the galaxy to see…Rather the same as she did have Rigelian fever," he nodded at his console. "A fairly classic and particularly deadly case. The levels of ryetalyn antibodies in her immune system are still extremely high, and there's evidence of minor lesions along her esophagus and upper intestine -- that, and she wears a size one average," he winked at Garak.

"What does that mean?" Anon insisted as Bashir walked away.

"It's a generic form of measurement," Dax offered. "You're probably a four tall."

"Commander," Sisko suggested as Anon's head whipped around to her.

"Or did you mean Julian's medical assessment?" Dax smiled at Anon.

"Yes, of course he means your doctor's medical assessment!" Pfrann erupted with a surprising and extremely angry snarl. "I had Rigelian fever; my brother. Sixteen members of our crew! Anon wants to know what Bashir means by antibodies and lesions a year after the fact. Is Janice still ill, or isn't she -- Contagious, Garak! Contagious!" his neck coiled in Garak's direction. The tailor's continual study not having escaped _him_, regardless of what may or may not have escaped Garak's observations.

"Oh, no, I hardly think…" Garak blinked.

"Julian would be so calm," Dax said.

Pfrann eyed her. The head snaked forward, his amber yellow eyes bright. Kira caught him sharply by the arm. "That's enough!"

Pfrann's stare shifted to her. His father's nemesis. Emotional, if not physical. His brother's words ringing in his ears. If as his brother's wife Janice was his sister, as his sister Ziyal's guardian, what was Major Kira Nerys to him? His mother? At least there? Free to reprimand? Command?

"I said, that's enough," Kira repeated. "The lesions are all part of the infection -- you should know that!" she silenced any retort. "And maybe, just maybe the doctor, or medic, didn't have the equipment available to him to effect tissue regeneration."

"Actually," Dax said, "the high levels of antibodies suggests he didn't. He may have increased the dosage in an effort to abort the infection before permanent damage occurred. That can cause minor hemorrhaging of the affected internal organs -- commonly in a Human, the intestines and the lungs."

"If he was even a doctor or medic at all," O'Brien added. "The fact the woman resides in the outer colonies suggests he probably wasn't."

"A distinct possibility, Chief," Sisko agreed. "The Federation facilitators dispensed the ryetalyn antidote throughout the region, they did not necessarily administer it."

"Either that, or there was something _wrong_ with the supply," O'Brien assured. "I seem to recall there were Maquis raiders swarming all over the sectors. Jem'Hadar. Klingons. Cardassians."

"Also true," Sisko inclined his head.

"So there you have it," O'Brien waved at the display. "Take your pick."

Damar did. His thin smile floated over the screen with its detailed graphic of the unknown mass Janice Lange and her sophisticated holographic transmitter. "Maquis…"

"Oh, please!" Kira's hands flew up in flailing anger. "Why don't we just accuse her of being Romulan and get it over with?"

"Or Klingon," Worf said firmly.

Dax looked at him. He sighed. "Jadzia, Major Kira is correct. It has been insinuated Doctor Lange is a Bajoran or Federation Intelligence agent, and now Maquis." 

"Or at least insinuated that it's been insinuated," Dax nodded. "And I really think if Gowron was going to order surgical alteration for one of his agents, he would have included her hair, don't you?"

"What is your obsession with this woman's hair?" Worf insisted.

"I'm not obsessed. You are."

"Dominion!" Kira sputtered at Damar's taunting smirk. "The same as the rest of you!"

"In the meantime, it's you who must admit, Major, it's interesting your inept colonists could know so little about the appropriate administration of some serum and know so much about holographic implants…"

"I know!" Kira took a step closer to him, "that we used whatever we could get our hands on. From phasers, to rocks. And if you think that much has changed -- "

"Think again," O'Brien proposed. "While you're at it, underscore Cardassian on that list."

Damar scoffed. "Are you seriously suggesting we have employed one of our agents to argue our own point with ourselves?"

"You would," O'Brien nodded. "If anyone would, you would -- no, I'm not saying that. Of course I'm not saying that; the kid's no spy. You can _tell_ she's not a spy. I'm just saying that if anyone would, you would."

"The technology is Cardassian," Dax smiled at Sisko turning from the Chief with a shake of his head.

"Or at least the technological concept," Garak beamed.

"Sixteen steps and they are all still standing in the same circle," Anon nodded to his brother. Pfrann just looked at him, aggravation scarring his face. Anon shrugged. Truth was truth, as fair was fair. They just spent two hours taking their turns with attempting to humiliate him. It seemed like a good time to reclaim a little of what they tried to take away from him, and secure some much wanted information from them at the same time. His eyes clicked over the group like a phaser relay setting its sights, settling on the Trill Dax; the one who employed humor as a mask for her intelligence. "What makes you think we had a doctor aboard my transport when we were beset by the Rigelian plague?"

"Did anyone ask?" O'Brien retorted. "Or better still, care?"

Anon ignored him, waiting for Dax.

"Did you?" she just asked him, no suspicion in her question or voice at all. He turned away satisfied the Federation had limited knowledge if any concerning his transport without accessing their files, and therefore no cause to suspect Janice of any involvement with him, regardless of everything else they suspected about her .

"Your point, Gul Dukat?" Sisko stopped him, keenly aware of the Cardassians' penchant for dancing, if he was aware of nothing else.

"We obtained the antidote," Anon granted, "from a squad of four Klingon raiders who attacked my transport following their attack of the Federation medical envoy whom they destroyed. The supply of serum was intended for a Bajoran outpost. It seems unlikely your Federation facilitators would distribute tainted serum potent enough to kill Bajorans rather than Cardassians."

"It does," Odo grunted. "The same as it seems unlikely the Klingons would be the attackers, being as they were the ones with the serum."

"Touché," O'Brien gloated. "Add to that, did you give it back?"

"Well, did you?" Kira asked when Anon turned from a silent Captain Sisko to eye her much in the same way as his brother had with thoughts similar to that of his brother. A head shorter than him, one quarter his heavy weight, at any time in ten years his father could have snapped her stubborn spine in half if he wanted to.

__

IF he wanted to. "I destroyed the Klingon squad of raiders," he assured. "The last face they saw before they died was mine. Not some holographic projection of their own." He held his breath waiting for her denial of her allegiance with his father throughout his Klingon campaign. 

"What?" Kira's face contorted.

"Oh, big man!" the cantankerous and blustering O'Brien extolled, his hand twirling circles in the air above his head.

"Chief!" Sisko thundered, an angry flush spreading up from his neck, quickly filling his cheeks.

"Excuse me!" O'Brien said. "But while he's out _waltzing _along his own damn border -- "

"Your father was in the heart of Klingon Space," Dax replied without apology for her potentially controversial remark. "You really cannot compare the two."

"No, you cannot!" Sisko assured, enraged more by the cool and calculating effort of Anon to rekindle hostilities than by any affront directed to his father.

"And by being put in the position of having to defend Dukat," Dax suggested to Worf.

"Yes," Worf understood.

Except Sisko had no intentions of defending Dukat. Damn the insolent, arrogant, inflammatory child standing in front of him to hell right along with his father.

"And damn Federation protocol," Dax winced.

"Yes," Worf agreed.

"No one has accused your father of cowardice, treachery, or any form of deceit!" Sisko seethed.

"Your point?" Anon interjected.

"Point?" Sisko choked in fury.

"Yes, well," Odo drawled, "chances are Captain Sisko's point is the same as that of First Minister Shakaar…Not to step on anyone's toes," he digressed for a moment to acknowledge Sisko firing him a look. "Or anyone's words. But being as much of this ongoing quarrel stems from and concerns a matter of security, any questions should be directed to me…

"As Chief of Security," he reminded Anon. "For the station, as well as this conference of yours. That's not my rule, or even my choice. You may recall my appointment to be a mutual agreement between your respective governments. Federation, Cardassian, as well as Bajoran. Reasonable, supposedly. I am Dominion. Previously and presently employed by the Bajoran Government to assist the Federation. Previously employed by your father during both his occupations to assist him."

"For the simple reason my father finds you weak," Anon said.

"Likewise," Odo assured. "Back to that theory of chances are if you can't find anyone less neutral than I am, you can't find anyone more impartial; you can't. You're all in violation of the agreed and mandated protocol. That all includes you and yours. Second only to Chief O'Brien…"

"Excuse me?" O'Brien reared.

"Second only to Doctor Lange," Odo ignored him. "Bashir, Major Kira, Commanders Dax and Worf, and so forth," he finished with his eyes on Sisko. "With all due respect, regardless of when this tête-à-tête was supposed to begin, it began the moment Lange walked through that airlock. Therefore so did the rules. Permission requested to assign everyone to their respective neutral corners as of now."

"Permission granted, Constable," Sisko agreed.

"Thank you. In the meantime, unless someone attacks the station between now and the end of the week, at which point I'll not only trust you to take care of it, I'll leave it to you to take care of it, consider yourself assigned. Corner of your choosing…A luxury," he returned to Anon, "not extended to you or any other guest of this station. Neutrals included. Back to that point of Captain Sisko's and First Minister Shakaar's you refuse to get. A simple one really. If the benefit of the doubt can be extended to your father that his situation, otherwise known as the heart of Klingon Space, warranted and explained his holographic transmitter as a necessary means of survival, rather than treachery or deceit, so can, and will, that same benefit of the doubt be extended to Doctor Lange, with her holographic transmitter and situation defined as a necessary means of survival in the outer colonies of Bajoran Space."

"Agreed," Anon accepted as easily as he accepted the earlier idea of a proximity detector implant and walked away.

"Yes, well," Odo supposed finally, "I said it was a simple point to understand… Mister Garak?" he invited Garak's opinion above and beyond the assortment of frowns and eyes round with confused amazement.

"Oh, yes," Garak breathed, a hint of a frown creasing his own brow, he suspected. His own eyes rounded with a degree of puzzled amazement. "Yes, you did say that, didn't you? Though, no, one would not anticipate it to be a point as simple to understand as all of that. You're so right."

"About what?" Odo grunted.

"In presuming young Gul Dukat to be an instigator, of course," Garak nodded. "A very good one. But then the art of instigation is an art. No less then knowing when to instigate, then when not to. Who, to instigate," he purred. "And who not to."

"What did you say was your point?" Odo verified.

"Precisely that, Constable," Garak promised. "Precisely that. I would keep a very close watch over young Gul Dukat. Yes, that I would."

"The point of the proximity detector," Commander Dax leaned over to whisper in his ear on her way to say her good-byes to Benjamin before retiring to her respective neutral corner.

"Oh, I know," Garak agreed. "Oh, yes, I certainly understand that. A proximity detector will tell you precisely where Gul Dukat is every minute of every hour of every day. The same as it will for everyone else…" he smiled down on Julian's medical console with its graphic display of the unknown entity or mass otherwise known as Doctor Janice Lange. "Or would, if one were required. That's elementary. As elementary to say that while such a situation might be difficult to circumvent, it's not impossible. Merely requiring a little ingenuity."

"Talking to someone in particular?" Chief O'Brien paused to say on _his_ way to_ his_ respective neutral corner that just so happened to include the Captain.

"Myself," Garak assured. "Only myself."

"It's probably safer that way." 

"She's a dangerous woman," Dax submitted for Sisko's consideration.

"Yes," Sisko answered before he realized what she had said.

"Or isn't that what you were thinking?" Dax smiled to his searching quizzical expression.

"No," Sisko acknowledged. "No, that isn't what I was thinking."

"Understandable," Dax accepted, thinking herself of the irony of a universe imperiled by the offering of peace. "One doesn't usually find the words radical or extremist…"

"Equated with pacifist," Sisko finished her thought. "You're right, of course."

"Maybe not," Dax patted his arm in attempted consolation. "She could just be the new Surak."

"And damn it all, Commander," Sisko swore a determined oath if that would help, "if I have anything to say about it, she will at least be given the opportunity!"

"Damn the Dukats, Shakaars and anyone else," Dax understood.

"Yes!" Sisko insisted. "Yes! With all due respect to First Minister's concerns over the Cardassian agenda he has systematically attempted to sabotage the conference, never mind anyone else. Giving Damar every conceivable reason to walk."

"Unless Damar wants it bad enough not to," Dax said. "Which obviously he does. I'm not so sure that's not an added reason for marked concern -- in the long run," she softened her dismal prognosis with another reassuring smile. "For the time being, I think it's probably safe to say it can't get any worse."

She spoke too soon. So did Benjamin when he agreed with her. No sooner than the words were out of his mouth, as if on cue, a loud and familiar growl rang out across the Infirmary, insistently demanding Sisko's immediate attention.

"Oh, Jeez…" O'Brien halted in his tracks with a groan. "Just what we need."

"Martok," Sisko covered his face with his hand.

"Perhaps I should try that again," Dax grimaced in sympathy.

"I doubt if it would make any difference," Sisko turned around to face the powerful Klingon bearing down on him across the floor.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

"Sisko!" General Martok's aging and prominent features twisted in rage, his one eye narrow and piercing like a beam of black light. His other eye a flat, empty socket, closed and sutured shut. He had lost that eye to a Jem'Hadar blade during the two years he had spent as a prisoner of the Dominion on a remote asteroid in the Gamma Quadrant while his Changeling impersonator reigned supreme throughout the Klingon-Cardassian war. He came away from that asteroid with a strong taste for revenge and earnest respect for one Cardassian only. Enabran Tain. A powerful and determined old man who also spent what turned out to be his last years as a prisoner of the Dominion on that asteroid before dying an honorable death on a stone plinth.

He was an unlikely candidate for anyone's respect, Tain. Cardassia's hated and feared exiled ruler of her former Obsidian Order. Singularly the most powerful Intelligence network in the galaxy until the Cardassian Civilian Revolt and subsequent fall of the Union. It was an insidious organization. One as intrigued by internal affairs as it was by those outside the State. Infamous for its heinous crimes of torture perpetrated against her occupied territories as well as her own people. Dukat's father reputedly died at the hands of an accomplished Obsidian interrogator. Elam Garak. Sisko's resident Cardassian tailor and Tain's son who also spent a short time as a prisoner on that asteroid where he found enough of his father's courage to attempt to continue his father's struggle to escape until the union between Cardassia and the Dominion was announced and escape proved unnecessary. Had Tain been alive he would have killed the messenger as Martok had killed him. He would have killed Dukat as Martok still wanted to though the Federation-Dominion war was over, and Cardassia's former Emperor Dukat faced, not freedom, but internment for life in a Federation prison for the criminally insane.

He would ignore Garak; Martok didn't even notice him. The steel spikes of his boots clattered across the floor of the Infirmary towards Sisko, his long black hair flying behind him, his arm outstretched. He stopped abruptly a step or two from the Captain, rage momentarily replaced by a frown of confusion as he turned on his heel to stare at something he caught a glimpse of in passing. The head of a Klingon woman bent in pain as she sat on an examining bed, Sisko's Bashir beside her.

"What is this?" Martok growled, immediately abandoning Sisko to investigate the situation for himself.

"He thinks she's Klingon," Dax interpreted Martok's abrupt about face with a smile for Benjamin who could only stare back at her.

"Klingon…" Sisko repeated carefully, his stare slowly turning away from Dax to follow Martok's flight.

"Klingon," Worf assured.

"Worf should know," Dax agreed as Benjamin's head snapped up to stare at Worf.

Kira gaped at Martok. "I give up. I give up!" she gripped Odo's tunic in both her fists, shaking him. "I do! I!" she assured, "GIVE! UP!"

"Yes, well, not really," Odo grunted.

"No," Kira sighed, "but it's a thought."

"Oh," Janice looked up startled from straightening the sleeve of her tunic to blink at the giant Klingon looming over her. Martok halted again, flustered by the face that was distinctly Human. No evidence of any family crest hidden under her streaked mass of hair. His penetrating glare dropped briefly to the thin hands and legs protruding from her knee-length tunic before he gripped her chin in his hand, his steel-gloved fingers squeezing her cheeks tightly. "Forgive me," he apologized, "I thought you were Klingon."

"No," Janice managed a slight smile and shake of her head.

Martok grunted, not entirely convinced even though he could feel the twigs she called bones.

"But would you believe she has heard that before?" Bashir offered, his hand on Martok's wrist because _feel_ the twigs was one thing. Listen to them splinter and shatter was quite another.

Martok grunted again, eyeing Janice's striped mane one last time before he let her go.

"Are you all right?" Bashir exhaled in relief.

"Oh, yes, I'm fine," Janice cracked her jaw once or twice just to be sure. "He wasn't trying to hurt me. I think I just startled him as much as he startled me. Actually, he seemed like a pleasant enough man." 

"As well as just by chance a member of one of the strongest species known in the galaxy," Bashir ran his tricorder over her jaw and throat to insure she hadn't suffered a hairline fracture of her cervical vertebrae. "It's a sheer miracle he didn't walk away and leave you paralyzed." 

"The Klingons are?" Janice smiled. "I don't believe I was aware of that."

"Second only to the Jem'Hadar and the Cardassians in the matter of pure brute strength," Bashir winked. "I say pure because its difficult to measure things like actual strength when one species has a tendency to whine, while the other has a tendency to_ enjoy_."

"You left someone out of your rather rude analogy," Janice laughed.

"The Jem'Hadar," Bashir nodded. "The classification of humanoid has become rather broad over the years. You do know they are genetically engineered?"

"Well, I'm not so sure everyone isn't genetically engineered," Janice shrugged. "The classification of Nature is also rather broad. Varying from culture to culture. And who's to say which culture is absolutely right? Except for themselves?"

"You know, you really are a very fascinating woman," Bashir decided. "Beyond your Klingon hair and two doctorates. Potentially dangerous, I'm sure some might think. With all those radical thoughts rattling around in that brilliant head of yours."

"Because I say what I mean, or I mean what I say?" Janice's eyes twinkled delightfully. "I've also heard that before."

"I'm sure you have," Bashir agreed. "Personally I'd settle for half the honesty…particularly since, one could always refer to the other half as mystery," he proposed with a slow and suggestive blink of his tortoise-colored eyes Janice would say. Certainly not completely brown, but flecked with sparkles of yellow, green and blue, at least under this light.

"Well, personally," Janice straightened up with her smile and a professional nod of her head, "I'm not so sure you're not potentially dangerous yourself, Doctor. Therefore I'd settle for knowing why you believe Cardassians are stronger than Klingons."

"Coward," Bashir laughed.

"Cardassians?" Janice countered wickedly. "With all that brute strength? That doesn't make very good sense."

"Can be cowardice," Bashir promised. "Redundancy and the ability to regenerate vitals organs aside, Cardassians have one thing Klingons do not have, and that is a hide. Not flesh or tissue like you and I," he picked up her hand. "But a thick, leathery hide. Virtually impenetrable."

"No, it isn't impenetrable," Janice frowned at her hand that she could for a moment see covered with Cardassian blood.

"Virtually, I insist," Bashir released her to rest on his elbow, talking into her eyes and over Martok's shouts of Klingon fairy princesses beset by Cardassian beasts. "Do you know I once shot Garak in the back of his throat during a holographic reenactment? Quite accidentally, I can assure you. And not with a phaser, but with a small steel projectile called a bullet, fired from an ancient Earth weapon called a gun. Do you know what happened?"

"It bounced harmless off?" Janice guessed.

"Well, no, not exactly," Bashir admitted. "It did penetrate, though barely with this resulting little trickle of blood hardly worth noting."

"But he cried anyway?"

"Cried? Garak? Oh, no," Bashir shook his head. "He was surprised, of course. Touched his neck and said something in utter amazement like, 'Julian, you shot me.'"

"I see," Janice said.

"Good," Bashir grinned. "Back to that air of mystery I think you should cultivate …Not that you don't have an air of mystery, because you do."

"Back to that theory of yours," Janice suggested instead, "that's all wet."

"I beg your pardon?" Bashir started.

"You're all wet," Janice laughed. "The bullet did penetrate. Garak did bleed and he didn't whine."

"Yes, but I explained…" Bashir said.

"No," Janice shook her head. "No, you told me a story about shooting Garak in the neck with a steel projectile. And while I might only be an archeologist, Doctor, I do know if you shot me, or I shot you, however accidentally, we would have blown each other's head clear off our shoulders."

"What a graphic image," Bashir agreed. "Quite colorfully red."

"Yes, it is," Janice said. "The only assessment I can make from your account is that the degree of pain or injury required to make a Cardassian whine must be astounding. Far beyond what you and I would call sheer agony. All the way to the point that we would both far more likely be dead before we had a chance to utter the tiniest little cry."

"Actually you're the one who's all wet," Bashir laughed. "All things taken into consideration, my shooting Garak in the neck is about equivalent to a bee sting on me. But that's quite all right. Did I mention how you were fascinating anyway?"

"Yes, you did," Janice assured. "The same as you mentioned you were genetically enhanced."

"I am," Bashir grinned. "As illegal as it is, and it is, I am."

"How thoroughly unnatural of you, Doctor," she teased. "Really, the classification Human is apparently quite broad also, not only humanoid."

"As well as quite fresh," Bashir promised.

"Fresh? No, I'm not fresh," Janice denied. "I simply say what I mean, and mean what I say." she stared across the room at Anon, wondering if she'd have a chance to say it, and if so how. It was a moment before she realized he had a knife in his hand. "Anon!" she gasped.

"Quite!" Bashir dropped his tricorder in agreement with a protective jump in front of her; he wasn't quite sure why, other than it seemed to be the thing to do. "I believe you mean Klingon dagger. Kut'luch, specifically. Martok's, if you want to be even more specific." Not that it was necessary since that was quite obviously Martok staring down the point of his own blade, an amused smile on his face.

"But, why?" Janice insisted behind him, clutching his shoulders and trying to see around him.

"Well, I don't know why," Bashir assured. "Probably something to do with the fact that they've been at war with one another for three years. Something to do with the conference. Something to do with he's Klingon and he's Cardassian. He's General Martok and he's the son of Gul Dukat. _The Gul_ _Dukat_, let us not forget that. No Changeling impersonators or reasonable facsimiles thereof."

"Oh, for goodness sake!" Janice huffed, Bashir wouldn't go as far as saying angrily. The same as he was certain she pulled his hair quite accidentally in an effort to maintain her balance while she hopped up and down on one foot, busily yanking her cloth slipper off her other.

"What are you doing?" Bashir stared at her in shock.

"Throwing my shoe at them," Janice assured. "Why?"

"Why?" Bashir stared at the cloth slipper she called a shoe clenched in her hand. "Well…" he said. Considering her slipper was cloth not steel, he seriously doubted if it would do any worthwhile damage. The same as he seriously doubted that considering its light weight it would even make it halfway there. "You can't very well fling your shoe at Klingons or Cardassians for that matter," he insisted.

"I can't?" Janice corrected him, challenged actually. "Why not?"

"Why not?" Bashir echoed. "Well, I don't know why not. Why would you?" he wondered, the psychology behind her reasoning beginning to intrigue him. "Or for that matter, do you really think you should?"

"Definitely!" Janice gave her slipper a heave over his shoulder in the general direction of the crowd of people that by that point included many more than simply Dukat and General Martok.

"Did it work?" Bashir asked, his eyes closed, his back turned against the masses.

"I don't know," Janice sat back down on the examining bed with a sigh. "It at least got everyone's attention."

"Yes, I'm quite sure it did that," Bashir agreed, "even if they're not quite sure why. Excuse me," he pardoned himself to go and collect her slipper for her, confident that whatever had triggered the latest conflict of wills was all over with. Which it was. For the next five minutes or so. Bashir also found himself in marked agreement with that prognosis.

"What is he doing?" Anon stiffened in concern when Martok grasped Janice.

"Anon…" his brother's arm halted him in warning as Damar's attention vacillated between concentrating on Martok to flashing the two of them a quick glance.

"He's hurting her," Anon angrily shoved the arm aside. "He could kill her holding her like that. Snap her neck. If I could kill her, he could kill her!"

"He's talking to her," Pfrann claimed.

"Talking to her?" Anon's fingers clenched Pfrann's throat in a painful grip. "If I talked to you like this you'd soon have something to say about it, wouldn't you?"

"Anon!" Pfrann pulled his brother's hand loose.

"I should have known," Damar chuckled to his assistant Paq, silent not because he didn't have anything to say.

"What?" Anon snapped at him. "Known what?"

"Anon!" his brother insisted as Damar's cold eyes flickered back over the two of them.

"You don't know anything," Anon assured, settling into glaring at Martok releasing Janice to clatter his way back to Sisko.

"General," Sisko put up his hand in a calm and reassuring gesture to slow Martok's pounding advance.

Martok slammed the hand aside, his voice an outraged roar. "You have a plausible explanation for the state of the young Klingon queen, I suppose?"

"The who?" Kira mouthed to Odo.

"Young Klingon queen," Odo grunted. "But don't give up. Personally I wouldn't miss this part for the world."

"Nor I," Garak assured in utter fascination.

"Human," Dax stood up on the tip of her toes to offer Martok in a whisper just in case Benjamin really did find himself at a momentary loss for words. "Doctor Janice Lange. Bajoran representative to the Bajoran-Cardassian Conference."

Martok ogled her, this Trill Jadzia Dax, wife of his friend Worf. He liked her. Even her determination to make her mark in what was truly a man's world. She had grace, intelligence and strength. "Debatable," he decided, his sneer a friendly one.

"Debate all you want to," Dax shrugged.

"She is Human, General, yes," Sisko upheld quietly.

"And I asked you a question," Martok screamed. "Who is responsible for the child's injuries regardless of whose species she claims as her heritage? You? Or perhaps you?" he challenged Worf and O'Brien. Kira and Odo. "Or you," he turned around to fasten his piercing black eye on Damar. "_Legate _Damar," he taunted. "Done with licking his master's boots he has apparently decided to try them on for a while and see how they feel. Eh, Dukat?" he ignored Anon to solicit Pfrann. "Which one of you is Dukat? You are obviously. You look just like him. No question of who your father is…A question, yes," he turned back around to Sisko with a chuckle, "perhaps of who is the mother. Eh, Sisko?"

"She really is Human," Dax promoted again in his ear.

"Who is?" Martok snarled. "The mother of that Cardassian reptile? Dukat spends as much time trying to outdo himself as he does everyone else."

"The young woman with Doctor Bashir," Sisko reminded quietly.

"What of it?" Martok scoffed.

"You really are wasting your breath?" Dax nodded, a friendly blow to his ego, but then she also liked him. He was a good man. A strong man. Honest in his love of his world even if he insisted on upholding the prehistoric notion that women did not belong on the Council floor.

Martok thought about her point of wasting of his breath. Gnashed it around in his teeth for a while before he threw back his head with a loud laugh. "You can't fault an old man for trying," his hand clapped Sisko's shoulder in merriment.

"No," Sisko agreed as quietly as before.

"So tell me who is responsible for the disservice done to the child," Martok insisted, his hand dropping from Sisko shoulder to grip the hilt of his kut'luch fastened at his waist. "Human, Klingon or Trill, it would be my honor to avenge her."

"No disservice, General," Sisko assured. "A mandatory blood screening, that's all. As required by the joint committee of the conference."

"Ah, the conference," Martok nodded to Dax. "You mentioned that. A Bajoran representative to the Cardassians. So the child isn't entirely Human as you claim."

"She is Human," Sisko maintained. "As she is a Neutral acting as representative for the Bajoran Council of Ministers."

"Shakaar?" Martok laughed uproariously. "The only difference between him and Dukat is his politics!"

"Excuse me?" Kira's blood pressure shot to the top of her head.

"When it comes to women, Major," Martok reassured her, "not his soul. Have no fear, I have no quarrel with the heart of your savior anymore than I'm sure his Prophets do."

"Funny, but you know," Dax remarked to O'Brien's shoulders shaking in laughter beside her, "I'm not so sure Kira fully appreciates the sentiment behind the words."

O'Brien couldn't even bring himself to answer her.

"I had word of it," Martok released the hilt of his dagger to point at Sisko. "This conference."

"Yes," Sisko suspected that might be the reason behind the General's visit.

"Visit," Martok waved. "I am always here. Like Dukat, I find it difficult to stay away. Why?" he peered in Sisko's face. "Do you think I should leave?"

"I think," Sisko choose his patient words carefully, "we would both do each other a greater service if we continued this discussion in my office."

"Why?" Martok smirked. "Is there something about my presence someone might find offensive? The Human child perhaps? Recoiling in terror from the one-eyed Klingon warrior?"

"I haven't noticed Doctor Lange to recoil, General," Sisko granted.

"Nor I," Martok agreed. "So it must be the Cardassians who concern you as they concern me. You claim a station free of carnage…"

"If I have anything to say about it," Sisko's voice tightened.

"You don't," Martok interrupted and Sisko's flush spread through his cheeks. "You can't. Nor will you."

"My office, General," Sisko directed, "before I forget myself."

"You?" Martok chuckled. "My friend? A threat?"

"A promise. For the last time under your own accord or escorted like a child. The choice is yours. It makes no difference to me."

"I believe you," Martok's hand clapped Sisko's shoulder again with a smile. "That's why I like you. Ask Worf. On the day you forget yourself, will be a day the galaxy will live to regret."

"I have liked to believe that myself, General," Sisko had to admit, "upon occasion."

"Who hasn't?" Martok's sharp nod was for Dax. "Save your energies for your husband. I'll be in Sisko's office."

But not before he was unable to resist halting in front of who he believed to be young Gul Dukat. Whatever he was planning to say as he lunged forward into Pfrann's face was lost in the instant between the time Anon reacted to rip the dagger from its harness at Martok's waist. Martok was staring at the tip of his own blade, amusement playing his face over the brazen audacity of such a foolish young man.

"Distinctly foolish," Martok promised the boiling red eyes glittering like fire. "Someone take this toy away from this child before he hurts himself."

"Worf!" Sisko had already barked with an instinctive grab for Anon's wrist that he hung onto with every ounce of Human strength he had. "Drop it!" he demanded. "I said, drop it, Dukat, or so help me!"

"Oh, yes, Dukat," Garak assumed the responsibility of enlightening Martok as to his earlier understandable error in confusing the two young Cardassians. "Gul Dukat, as a matter of fact. Not to say the other isn't Dukat, because of course he is; merely younger…And if I may say so, Captain," he likewise took advantage of the moments between Anon's ability to hold out against Captain Sisko's manacled grip around his arm, as well as Commander Worf's manacled grip around his throat in what Garak believed Humans referred to as hammer lock, "you certainly can't fault Gul Dukat for defending himself or his younger brother from what he believed quite likely was about to be General Martok's assault."

"Your tailor has a point, Captain," Damar voiced his thoroughly unwanted and unnecessary opinion. "General Martok did attack first. I'm sure your impartial Chief Constable of Security will uphold that claim as fact."

"He will," Odo grunted. "He'll also make a point to say regardless of everything that's been said to the contrary, upon occasion it is of benefit to be a shape-shifter. Or at least a close friend of one. See what I mean?" his liquid fingers slid neatly in between Anon's vise grip to pull the dagger free.

"Oh, we do," Garak drooled. "We certainly do."

"I had a feeling you might," Odo nodded to Anon. "Following in your father's footsteps shouldn't include his follies."

"I agree," Anon assured. A not too subtle hint that he just might have a different opinion over what constituted a folly and what did not. Hatred and attempted annihilation of the Klingon Empire at any and all costs probably did not.

"Hm," Odo grunted. "We'll keep it in mind." Even still he had a feeling what the group of them would not be able to agree upon, aside from with each other, was the rhyme, reason or purpose behind a cloth slipper finding its way onto the scene just about then. Initially airborne, it landed with intensity of a feather about a foot and a half away from the almost injured party General Martok. Commander Dax's curiosity got the better of her even if no one else's got the better of them, stooping to retrieve the visiting shoe and pass it after a brief moment or two of scrutiny onto Bashir babbling something about the heat of the excitement of the moment and the subsequent understanding thereof.

"Yes, well, no," Odo declined understanding anything. The same as he was sure everyone else did and would. Confident they all had enough on their mind not to waste time pondering why an intelligent woman such as Doctor Janice Lange would take to throwing her shoe at dagger-wielding Klingons, or Cardassians as the case actually was, beyond the hopes of capturing everyone's attention, which it did. Simply after the fact.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

"She threw her shoe at them," Kira paced around in a circle while waiting for her turn at proving she wasn't a Changeling even if she insisted upon consorting with them after all that had been said and done. "What am I going to do with her? What am I going to do?"

"Yes, well, I wasn't aware you were supposed to do anything with her," Odo replied.

"Well, I'm not," Kira agreed. "I'm not. I'm supposed to counsel her, yes."

"Yes," Odo said.

"If she has any questions about the Prophets' teachings, or Bareil's writings," Kira nodded.

"Yes," Odo said.

"She threw her shoe at them?" Kira grimaced. "Sounds like something Quark would do."

"Or Commander Dax," Odo deferred to the acclaimed practical joker of the group, there to keep a close eye over the last member of her troupe to make sure Kira didn't get it into her head to start throwing her shoes at anyone.

"Sounds like a girl thing," Dax shrugged.

"Girl, yes," Odo grunted. "She certainly is a girl, isn't she? A young woman more accurately by Federation standards."

"Oh, don't you start," Kira socked him, though she was laughing when she did. Continuing to laugh as she hung her head in proclaimed frustration. "Between Bashir and O'Brien…I can't take it, Odo, I can't. Not if you start, too." By that time she was laughing to the point she was almost crying, her fists hammering down into the examining bed.

"Yes, I can see that," Odo agreed.

"She threw her shoe at them," Kira collected herself to some extent. "Odo, she threw her shoe at them. Do you have any idea how many times I have wanted to do something like that?"

"No. Though correct me if I'm wrong, you will tell me."

"A lot," Kira promised. "Yes, I'll tell you, and it's a lot. And she did it. She did it!"

"So I understand," Odo grunted, really the only thing he could say.

"Sounds like a mother thing." Dax took care of saying anything else.

"A what?" Kira looked at her.

"A mother thing," Dax smiled. "You have a mother thing."

"I have a mother thing?" Kira repeated.

"Uh, hm," Dax nodded. "For Janice Lange."

"How could I have a mother thing?" Kira insisted. "I don't even know her."

"Well, not knowing someone doesn't stop anyone from having instincts… such as feeling a need to offer assistance or protection?" Dax suggested. "Sound familiar?"

"Or stop the impression you get from the person, such as someone in need or want of protection," Bashir wandered into the discussion with the announcement that Kira was precisely who she claimed to be, and that was not a Changeling. "Lange does rather have an air of virginal innocence around her," his smile turned to Dax, the last of the last apart from Captain Sisko to prove her DNA was her DNA, but certainly not the least.

"On the contrary," Bashir said, apparently of the same impression as the Chief that marriage and flirting in front of witnesses really didn't count, "there's something to be said for keeping the best for last."

"Oh?" Odo drawled. "What's to be said?"

"That I'm last." Dax declined adding fuel to Bashir's fire, pleasantly assuming her seat on the examining bed.

"Yes," Bashir supported with a rakish grin. "The same as it's late. You're tired, the same as I'm tired. You want to get home to Worf, the same as Worf wants you to…Or is that allowed?" he hinted how there was consortion and then there was consortion.

Odo turned his bland expression on Kira about ready to agree with her that he wasn't going to be able to take too much more of this himself.

"The Chief was worse," she said.

Odo's expression didn't change but that didn't detour her.

"O'Brien was worse," Kira insisted. "He's married for one thing."

So was Commander Dax. But Odo still got Kira's point. Apparently flirting was more significant when the offender was married rather than the offended. Even if Lange wasn't offended, which Commander Dax was. Odo eyed Dax's spots still dark violet as they had been throughout most of the evening.

"Of course it's more significant," Kira scoffed. "Why? Don't you think it is?"

"No," Odo said.

"No?" Kira gawked. "The Chief made a fool out of himself."

"Yes," Odo supposed by her standards he did. The same as Martok probably did.

In the meantime Bashir was extremely close to having Commander Dax make sem'hal stew out of him.

"Benjamin decided to make an exception in our case," Dax nodded to Bashir.

"When hasn't Benjamin decided that?" Bashir wondered. "In the meantime, failure to sequester you and Worf could very well be interpreted by Legate Damar as preferential treatment between the Federation and Bajor -- if not ganging up on Cardassia."

"Perish the thought." Odo's grunting reminder that witnesses were witnesses, as in present to witness didn't go entirely unnoticed.

"Julian…" Dax proposed a similar suggestion that he stop.

"I know," he grinned, "how dare I mention virginal and Janice in the same sentence."

"Actually, I was going to say…" Dax's head tipped in thought.

"That I'm almost as obnoxious as when I first arrived six years ago? Can't seem to decide if being obnoxious or playing the good doctor twenty-four hours a day is more me?"

"That's probably closer," Dax nodded. 

"Damn it all!" Anon's fist struck the console in frustration, pitting his knowledge against their knowledge the Federation was winning. He couldn't find Janice anywhere.

"Anon," his brother sighed at his side in their assigned quarters with its impressive view of the station's docking ring and Martok's Klingon Bird-of-Prey lying in wait outside.

"Tan!" Anon's fist attacked his com badge. "Janice doesn't have a proximity detector, she has a security tag like some criminal. The frequency should be simple to find. Cardassian-Dominion technology surpasses Federation, everyone knows that."

The interference from Sisko's shields was noticeable in the quality of his Engineer's answer but tolerable. _"Someone forgot to tell Sisko. You have a level 5 security field at both ends of the corridor."_

"So?" Anon retorted. "Look for a level 5 security field at both ends of some other corridor. Martok is here. Damar. I am not the only trouble-maker. The field just doesn't keep us in, it keeps everyone else out. Janice would have one also." 

__

"The security field is Cardassian," Tan reminded him integrated Cardassian-Federation technology was an older, far more tested and exact science than their experiments with Dominion._ "One_ _of Dukat's. I'm having difficulty maintaining a lock."_

"Don't say it," Pfrann warned Anon.

"I'm not going to say anything," Anon returned to the console. "If Legate Dukat wanted to live like a prisoner in his own command that was up to him."

"Janice has a DNA inhibitor," Pfrann insisted. "You don't even know if they activated the security tag."

"Holographic transmitter," Anon corrected. "And they activated the security tag. I don't think the Changeling is that smart, but I also don't think he's that trusting."

Pfrann was silent.

"Janice isn't a spy," Anon looked up, his voice holding an edge. "The idea is nonsense. I don't care what Sisko or Damar think."

"Sisko?" Pfrann snapped, but only because he probably cared less than his brother what Sisko thought.

"Yes, Sisko. I saw his face the same as I saw Damar's. DNA inhibitors. Holographic transmitters. What else can Janice be? Bajoran Intelligence. Bullshit. She's Janice. And she knows as little about Shakaar as she knows about Legate Dukat," he glowered at the uncooperative sensors. "Our father is not an engineer, Pfrann, I am. Why can't I find one woman in a sea of thousands? I didn't even see any other Humans, did you? If I can penetrate the Federation systems, deflect their security lock, I should be able to bypass his stupid field." 

"No," his brother's hand sliced through the air impatiently. "I saw _your_ face when you saw her. I see it when you look at her. That is the face I am concerned about."

"Because you know I'm serious?" Anon focused on scanning the station deck by deck.

"Yes," Pfrann insisted. "Because I know you're serious."

"A reason to rejoice, Pfrann," he suggested, "not panic."

"I am not the one panicking," Pfrann groaned. "You are; or you can," he said when Anon abruptly aborting his efforts to stand there in the somber, pensive stance of the Klingon Worf. As believable and trustworthy as some Klingon. "You have. I've seen you!"

His breath was wasted. Anon renewed his attack on the console with a punch of his com badge. "Tan!"

__

"The field…" Tan sighed.

"Forget about the field," Anon instructed, excitedly. "You're looking for an unknown entity. Sixty-five percent water. Internal temperature…Yes!" he cheered, grasping Pfrann's arm in triumph when the scanners suddenly halted their sweep.

"You found her?" his brother stammered at the display.

"Yes, of course, I found her. Simple. Just like Bashir. The sensors can read her, they just don't know what she is. I like that, and I don't like that," he activated his com badge one more time. "Tan!"

"But the force field…" Pfrann snapped out of his daze, having an idea of what Anon was planning to do.

He was right. "If Tan can penetrate Sisko's shields he can circumvent the security field…True or false, Tan?" Anon verified, the expected answer evident in Tan's voice. 

__

"I can try," Tan straddled the fence between the two.

"No," Anon corrected. "Do, Tan, do."

"No, is right!" Pfrann desperately supported. "Tan can circumvent the shields to communicate with you, Anon. Not to transport you." he could barely finish the thought.

"Me?" Anon said. "No, I'm not transporting. Janice is."

Pfrann stared at him. Somehow his brother's willingness to take such a risk with Janice's life did not seem compatible with his ardent claim of love. Pfrann wasn't quite sure why he thought that, he just knew he did.

"I have a proximity detector implant, Pfrann," Anon patiently reminded him. "Janice has that stupid tag. They are suspicious of her, but frightened of me. Suspicion comes with my presence…with my name," he smiled slightly at his father's paranoia activated along Janice's corridor as he fed her coordinates to Tan for comparison to what he could see. "Why do you think I agreed? Let them monitor me. I never left this room."

"You could kill her," Pfrann answered hoarsely. "The field could disrupt the matter stream and scatter her molecules."

"No, I am not going to kill her," Anon shook his head, "and neither is Tan."

"I said could! Our father had to be thinking of site to site transports and take precautions against them."

"Klingon," Anon nodded. "Federation, Bajoran, yes."

"The Dominion phasing technique is as unstable as the Romulan, you know that," Pfrann's hand slapped down on the console severing the data link to the Tir.

"And neither is Damar going to kill her!" Anon shoved him away with a bark. "You heard what he said in the Infirmary the same as I did!"

"No, he said, I know. That is all he said. He was talking about Martok!"

"He was talking about Janice! He was talking about me! Rigelian fever. Transports and Klingons eight months ago. He knows our location. He doesn't have to look at any data to verify our coordinates. If he examines the Bajoran and Federation records -- which he will do; is doing, he'll know Janice's world is our world. I am our father. Janice is Naprem. And she is a spy!"

"Spy," Pfrann groaned. "If Damar is thinking that, he is as insane as you. I was there. Tan. Everyone. You were not indiscreet. Janice is Janice, not Naprem. And Anar!" he hissed in Anon's face, "is Maquis! Something else to be concerned about. They cannot agree with this conference; they cannot!"

"Maquis," Anon scoffed, calmer for a moment. "We destroyed the Maquis, Pfrann, don't you know that? Remember? We annihilated them. Killed those we felt like killing and when we grew bored condemned their shattered dreams to our mines. There are no more Maquis."

"No," Pfrann shook his head, invoking Anon's earlier words. "Maquis is an idea, Anon. A dream. A sixty year old grandfather," he clutched him, "with a grandson of six months!"

"Uncles with First Ministers for their nephews." Anon said, well aware of Anar's lineage he couldn't hide anymore than his brother could hide his face unless he wore a mask. "Like Dukat, Shakaar wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice Janice to cover his own indiscretion; Anar will never allow it. He'll kill him long before I or you."

"I am talking about you!" Pfrann hissed. "Shakaar is looking to destroy the conference and his weapon is _you_! The Maquis have sympathies throughout the Federation, more than it cares to admit. Anar is a martyr; Janice less. Who they will condemn is you. From the Bajorans to the UFP, _to Cardassia Prime!"_

"And in Damar's mind," Anon understood, "I will kill Janice to silence her. Saving his precious consulate and sparing him the trouble of having to do it himself. Well, I have a better idea. I am not going to kill Janice and blame it on the Bajorans, or the Breen. I'm going to marry her and blame it on love. Tan!" he hammered his com badge.

__

"I have the data," Tan agreed.

"Good," Anon ignored his brother pacing around the living area of their quarters, reactivating his link to his battle cruiser. "Use a pattern enhancer for a test article -- a small one. One Janice can pick up in her hand. She will pick it up, Tan. I know her. She is intrigued and fascinated by everything around her even if she doesn't have any idea what it is; which she doesn't. You could send her a phaser on overload and she would pick it up."

There was a momentary silence from his Chief Engineer.

"Don't even think about it, Tan," he warned. "You know I hate to repeat myself and the speech is quickly becoming old. The enemy is Damar, not Janice."

__

"Preparing test article," Tan agreed.

"You didn't answer me!" Anon snapped. "Janice did not save my life and my brother's and forget to save yours. Cardassian filth was the dirt on your uniform to her, not you. Move in her direction to harm her and I will no more hesitate to kill you then I would Damar or anyone."

__

"Your concern is unwarranted," Tan reassured above the static interference. _"Our loyalty is sworn to you and the Lieutenant and your families as it was to your father and his."_

"Lieutenant," Anon grinned at his brother's sullen scowl. "That's you. You hear the respect in his voice? He doesn't have to say it, all you have to do is listen."

Pfrann couldn't listen to Tan. He was still listening to what Anon said about their father's murder of Tora Naprem that he subsequently blamed on the Breen.

"Yes, Breen, Pfrann," Anon sighed. "I don't think our father sent a woman and their child to their new life to return six years later to kill only the daughter who did not see to die. Perhaps in his mind he did this, yes. To console, cajole Nerys. Incur her favor and sympathy. But in truth, the liabilities were two, not one. Tora Naprem and Tora Ziyal were prisoners, not passengers, and the deaths would have been two not one."

"You would like to believe," Pfrann answered quietly.

"What I would like to believe and do believe is irrelevant," Anon interrupted. "Tora Naprem and Tora Ziyal alive or dead does not change the fact that Nerys is his conscience if she is nothing else to him. Picking, prodding and chipping away at him for ten years. A power he has allowed her when he could snap her in half. A myriad of threats and tantrums, he has never done it. Why do you think that is? I know what I think, you're right, I do."

"You would like to think the threat is only Damar!" his brother completed his thought. What _he_ was talking about. The details and truth of a twenty year old love affair long dead and forever buried with his half-sister Ziyal irrelevant other than as a glaring example that it was. It existed. Its universal dangers as alive and compelling as they always were, regardless of the players' names.

"Yes, of course, I would like to believe that," Anon shrugged with a disinterest he could not begin to feel. "First in line, not third behind the Bajorans and the Maquis -- and the True Way," his grin for his brother was sly that time. "Two years ago you were fighting the Civilian Counsel on our father's behalf so you claim."

"Truth not claim!" Pfrann snapped.

"Truth, not claim," Anon shrugged again. "Truth is Central Command is not as impotent as you once thought. Anymore than our father is as he believes he is -- _emotionally_, Pfrann," he clarified before his brother finished counting down the names of his siblings. "Emotionally and physically in his strength. Who is, is Damar. You should be happy, not frightened. You like to fight, now you are fighting Damar on our father's behalf. Protecting Legate Dukat's daughter and yet-born grandson, my son, and your nephew from him. Martok's Klingons. The Bajorans and the Maquis. In that order for tonight. By tomorrow, yes, you are right, the order will have changed with the Bajorans at the top of the list!" his fist on his com badge. "Tan!"

__

"Pattern enhancer is ready."

"Well, do it," Anon ordered. "An hour to find her, an hour to explain the reasons why. She's not asleep, she's waiting for me…Is she?" his question of Pfrann glancing over the display was anxious.

"She's moving around," Pfrann agreed.

"Tan?" Anon asked.

__

"Initiating transport."

"And?" Anon said.

__

"Complete," Tan assured.

"She has the pattern enhancer," Pfrann nodded as Anon stared at the console. "You were right. She picked it up."

"Yes!" Anon's hand cracked against his arm, his voice elated. His face settled into disdain a moment later.

"What?" Pfrann said tiredly. "I didn't say anything. I'm tired of arguing with you. You're right. I like to fight. And so we fight," he shrugged. "Your fight. My fight. Legate Dukat's. It's all the same. And we will win."

"What? What?" Anon's face pressed close to his. "Go to bed. That's what. I need assistance, I'll call you. I don't think I will."

"To bed," Pfrann repeated.

"To bed." Anon returned to his com badge and patient engineer. "Now, Tan. Don't worry about the security bracelet. I will take care of it…" his smile teased his brother dallying. "Continue transmitting Janice's signal for the Changeling's files until you find her a new bracelet…Not too difficult to do. They're Cardassian. The same as everything else here is."

"Oh," Janice blinked once as she flopped down on her bed to curl up on her side, Damar's proposal dangling from her hand, the room suddenly tickling with the streams of a transport matter beam. She blinked again when she immediately rose to pick up the small curious looking instrument with its distinctive Cardassian markings.

"Anon?" she stood up to look around the quiet and dimly lit darkness. She was gone a moment later when the transporter beam abruptly returned. Her head swimming as she clutched the instrument. Her startled "Oh!" tinged slightly with fear.

"No, I have you!" Anon's voice penetrated her dizziness as the room faded in and momentarily out of focus. Janice felt his arm around her waist and his hand taking the instrument away.

"Where am I?" she really didn't have to ask that as her vision cleared. Obviously she was in his quarters, not hers. The tell-tale signs were pretty clear beyond the Klingon Bird-Of-Prey hovering just outside the porthole and Pfrann lingering in a doorway.

"Where do you think you are?" Anon grinned, feeling as giddy and breathless as when he had felt leaning over the railing in Quark's.

"Your quarters," Janice nodded.

"My quarters," Anon pulled her by the wrist towards the computer console, a new and different interesting looking instrument in his hand as he activated his com badge. "Tan, do you have her signal?"

__

"I have it," Tan assured.

"Good. Deactivating now. Try to maintain stability in the frequency. It doesn't have to be perfect…Just almost," he ginned at Janice peering curiously at her security bracelet. "What?"

"What are you doing?" she nodded.

"Deactivating you. Two hours it took me to find you, you know that? This thing was worthless. Everything was worthless until I started thinking like Bashir about what a DNA inhibitor could not hide."

"Holographic transmitter," Janice teased. "I am a rock. Doctor Bashir told me. I'm not quite sure why Anar just didn't."

"Would you have understood him if he did?" Anon snapped the security bracelet free to throw it across the room, trying not to run his hands up her bare arms as he stared at the sunset in her hair.

"I'm not sure I understood him when he called it a DNA inhibitor," Janice laughed. "Nadya."

"What?" Anon said absently.

"My hair." her finger poked him in his chest.

"Oh," Anon said. "Yes, I know that. I like it. But, no, I wasn't thinking that. I was thinking about my father…" he floated back to the apricot sun she called hair. "I cannot imagine his pain. He thinks you're a Klingon."

"Ziyal?" Janice agreed sympathetically.

"No, Martok," Anon shook his head. "That's his ship out there. His battle cruiser, he likes to think…" he frowned. "Why would Ziyal think you are Klingon?"

Janice would go along with that. "Why would your father be upset if she did?"

"What?" Anon said.

"I'll also go along with that," Janice nodded. "You said something about your father's pain. I said Ziyal. Then you said something about General Martok and the Klingons."

"He's here," Anon agreed. "That was him in the Infirmary screaming at Pfrann… Did he hurt you?" his hand dared to stray to her chin, touching it gently.

"Pfrann?" Janice wanted to laugh even though she knew who he meant. She couldn't laugh though. All she could do was gaze back into his eyes where she could almost see her reflection in his lens. Desperation made her think of the portholes and the ship docked outside. "Can he see us?"

"Pfrann?" Anon repeated. "No, he's in bed."

He was in the doorway a moment ago, though he wasn't there now. Janice pointed towards the portholes. "No, Martok."

"He can see Terok Nor, the same as she can see him. Why are you asking?"

"Because I'm not exactly dressed for company?" she hinted. The floor warm under her bare feet. The rough, woven fibers of his tunic tickling her bare arms starting to sweat. Anon woke up from his trance to notice the sleeveless green shift loosely covering her from her neck to her knees.

"I like your dress," he agreed. "It's soft."

"It's not a dress, it's a nightgown. Commander Dax's. I left mine on the shuttle."

"Why would you do that?"

"Because I'm not too bright?" she shrugged.

"Not too bright," Anon repeated, remembering she accused him of that for removing the spike of shrapnel from his chest. She must have been thinking of herself. Her chest and arms were half the size of Pfrann's half the size of his. The collarbone of her neck no thicker than one of his fingers. The force of the shrapnel would have killed her. Pierced her through one side and out the other. The impact of the crash would have crushed her, crumbling her dangling limbs into pieces.

"Did you mean to do that?" Janice was laughing after her broken security bracelet. "And even if you did, will it still work?"

"Never again," Anon assured, feeling himself fade back into his trance he attempted to snap out of it with a smile. "But that's all right. They're Cardassian. Tan has thousands of them…One or two, at least. He can borrow one from the Security office out from under the Changeling's nose if he can't find them."

"Next to the shelf marked knives," Janice folded her arms with a nod.

"Kut'luch!" Anon threw back his head with a laugh. "What did you expect me to do? Throw my shoe at him like you? Eh?" the tip of his steel-toed boot tapped lightly down on her toes. "My foot doesn't look like that; not anything at all."

"I know what your feet look like. Anar and I dodged them for three days. Stop trying to change the subject. You overreacted. Admit it. You should have just ignored General Martok."

"He's Klingon, Janice," he said. "Can you understand that?"

"I understand he's Klingon, yes. Anyone can see that."

"Yes, see it," Anon nodded. "A difference in the skin. A difference in the body. The hair, the shape of the head. That's it, that's all. Just like me -- Janice, I want you to quit the conference. Resign. Tell Shakaar no, you won't do it. For those two reasons. Klingon. Cardassian."

His request startled her. "Quit the conference? What did you mean? I can't just quit."

"Yes, you can," he insisted. "I want you to. Not for political reasons, for personal. I don't want you to get hurt!"

"Hurt?" she said. "Why would you say I'm going to get hurt?"

"Because that's why, Janice," he groaned. "That is exactly why. You don't understand -- you don't!" his hands gripped tightly around her shoulders. "Fight for your replicators, or give them away; nothing is going to save you, Janice, they're going to kill you anyway. _We're_ going to kill you," he said. "Yes, we. _We,_ Cardassian. _They,_ the Klingon. Bajoran. A week isn't going to change fifty years or even three. You can't disagree with us, you can't agree. We're not here to listen, we're here to tell you. You try to open your mouth, and Martok, Damar, Shakaar are going to shut it for you unless you shut theirs first. Can you do that? Can you?"

"Anon, please," she begged him. "I'm trying to understand, I really am; at least what you're saying to me. I just not sure what you expect me to say to you."

"Say thank you!" he surrendered and kissed her, his hands lost somewhere in the snarls of her hair. Her lips were as warm and soft as he remembered them, the flesh of her arm comfortably hot around his neck. He untangled his hands eventually; his smile light; his fingers toying with the tips of hers; their arms relaxed at their sides.

"Do you remember when I said Cardassians kiss for a reason?" he asked.

"Yes," she nodded.

"Humans, too?" he verified hopefully.

"Yes," her smile tickled her mouth.

"Good," he sighed a deep breath of approval. "So if I tell you my reasons, you will tell me yours?"

"Sounds fair," she agreed.

"I love you," he said, watching her lips part slightly again in surprise.

"Love?" Janice whispered.

"Here, let me show you," he picked up her hand, pressing his palm firmly against hers. "This is love on Cardassia. Binding. Union. And I love you," he assured her. "Eight months. I think I should tell you that especially when I haven't seen you for six. What do you think?"

"Oh, Anon!" she threw her arms around his neck.

"Time!" Anon pulled himself free of her kiss to gasp in her ear.

"The time is zero two hundred, zero five," the station's disinterested computer complied in its unemotional monotone.

"Tell me again when it's 0600," his hand gripped the back of her head carefully, the muscles of his arm tight with restraint. "If that's acceptable to you?"

"Probably," she giggled shyly.

"Yes, probably me, too," he swept her up off of her feet with a laugh and little effort. His uniform and boots were heavier than her, and their weight was nothing. He was unprepared for the extent of her Human weakness. At almost his height, six inches taller than his father's Nerys, he wasn't the only one who could crush her like a bag of air, so could the petite Major Kira. The realization startled and immediately frightened him. Not entirely confident in his ability to protect her against a galaxy of more powerful beings never mind the ruling notorious few. The smell of her hair was dizzying though, encouraging him to ignore his concerns. "Just whatever you do -- "

"Don't tell Anar," Janice laughed in agreement. 

"He threatened to kill me," Anon grinned. "Move, Dukat, in her direction, any of you, Pfrann, too."

"He said the same thing to me," she nodded.

"You?" he blinked. The threat made no sense. Anar adored and honored her. That was clearly obvious to him. Calling her daughter when he didn't call her child.

"Move, Federation," she teased him with suggestions of powerful friends and connections, "in Anon's direction, Pfrann's either. So I guess he must like you, too."

"Are you Federation?" he just wondered, no malice intended if she was Sisko's spy, Bajoran Intelligence or survived Maquis.

"Neutral," Janice crossed her heart. "Born, raised, to my grave. I think I'm probably too impatient to be anything else."

"Central Command," Anon understood the sentiment. "I am too impatient for Pfrann's True Way. They scheme for the Union to rule, I know we do rule. It doesn't matter though. Legate Dukat's Union will be restored either way. Guaranteed."

"Should I be frightened?" Janice asked, even though she wasn't.

"Of Legate Dukat or the Cardassian Maquis?" Anon laughed again. "Yes, definitely. But, no, you won't be. I also know that."

"Oh, well…" Janice touched his collar length straight black hair. It was coarse and oily either naturally or coated with a heavy pomade. Quite unlike hers as well as quite unlike the female of his race whose elaborate hairdos of twists and braids were often worn to their ankles. She wasn't sure if that was just the way it was on Cardassia. A preferred choice of hair dressing between the male and the female, or an attempt by the military to emulate the Romulan Star Empire and at least try to make themselves all look alike even though they didn't. "Perhaps I'll wait to quit the conference Tuesday."

"No, you don't have to quit," Anon shook his head. Her inspection of his hair while intriguing was mildly unnerving.

"But you said," Janice reminded him.

He knew what he said and the reasons why. They were all still valid. Unfortunately so were his feelings. "I don't want to leave in a week. You think I want to leave tomorrow? You quit, I couldn't convince Sisko with a phaser of a reason for me to stay. My father's right. What you Humans lack in strength you make up for in your thick heads, never mind us."

She looked at him; he changed to a safer subject, curious about the sweet smell and salty taste in his mouth. "You're sweating."

"Maybe because it's hot enough in here to make a Vulcan faint?"

"No, a Vulcan wouldn't faint. They like it hotter than we do. What's the matter with you? I thought you were an anthropologist?"

"Bajorans are as complicated as I get," she assured. "You, on the other hand, are a little too simple for your own good with your kut'luchs in one hand and your phaser rifles in another. It's 2375, Anon, catch up. Ram horns and brass brassieres were in fashion two thousand years ago on Earth."

"Simple," he scoffed. "Talk to my father five minutes, I have a headache. We are not a simple race, and he is a thoroughly confusing man."

"I'll remember that when I meet him. Now, turn the heat down. Don't tell me it's not a hundred and twenty in here, because it is."

"Good," he continued to ignore her complaint about the temperature. "So when I tell you not to listen to him, you will listen to me."

"Sounds controlling," Janice grinned. "How typical."

"Yes, that we are. Controlling. Not ourselves. You."

"I meant typical of a man," Janice laughed. "Any man. My mother warned me and after twenty-four years, I would have to say I agree with her."

"That's not very neutral of you," he slyly countered, alluding complaints of gender inequality were not entirely foreign to him.

"My dark side," Janice confessed. "Tell me yours. Are you going to make love to me and leave? I say no. There's an old Earth saying 'Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned' that suggests you better not even try."

"Terok Nor," he swore, "yes. Janice Lange, no."

"Good," she smiled. "Now tell me what you think of the name George."

He had no idea what she meant. Her question as mysterious as her reference to horns, making love and ancient human proverbs; subjects he didn't even attempt to approach. This time was different. "George?" he frowned.

__

"Your son." his half-sister Ziyal's voice whispered in his ear. He didn't recognize it anymore than he could see her standing in the realm between his universe and her Prophets' world.

"My son?" Anon stared at Janice in his arms.

"There's another Earth saying if you play with fire you shouldn't be surprised if your daughter Ziyal wakes you up in the middle of the night -- or your son," Janice bit her lip, staring into his eyes. "That is if Humans and Cardassians can mate. I don't know. Do you?"

Anon had no idea for all his sanctimonious ravings to his brother about separating and elevating himself above his father's rakish behavior.

"Probably not without genetic intervention," Janice decided. "Which would make it more of a choice rather than an accident."

"I disapprove of my father's actions," Anon interrupted her, "not his choices."

"There's a difference?" Janice always assumed one was the same as the other.

"Between myself and my father?" Anon misunderstood. "Yes. Huge." Though whatever the difference was it didn't stop him from joining with her anymore than the potential threat of parenthood did, so he must have meant something else.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

There's just something about Monday mornings that defy _all._ And it was Monday morning in the O'Brien household beyond a shadow of doubt. _"Three months?"_ The Chief's disheveled, in-need-of-a-shave face, gaped at his wife Keiko on the viewer screen _finally_ after spending all of yesterday and half the night trying to find her, never mind who else might be trying to find whom.

"Miles…" Keiko's patient tone had lost much of its patience, in fact it had a distinct edge.

"I know!" O'Brien assured before she said it again. "She's in school! Molly's in school! I heard you the first six times!"

Three times, actually. And, no, for the fourth time Keiko was not taking Molly out of school to pack her off home especially when school would be over in three short months.

To her it was three short months. To the Chief it was a lifetime. Twelve months already two lifetimes, or _four_ lifetimes if Keiko wanted to get_ mathematical_ about everything.

Keiko wasn't. She was simply firm. As firm the fourth time as she had been the first three. She was not removing seven year old Molly three quarters of the way through her school year to take her home to daddy, even if it meant the end of her eight year marriage to DS9's Chief Engineer.

"Oh, for!" O'Brien yanked the top of his worn blue bathrobe closed, gave up, tightened the sash and sat back down, his hair dripping wet from the shower, his chest streaked with soap residue. "Divorce? Who's talking about getting a divorce?"

Keiko shrugged. The way he was acting, you'd think that's what he was saying.

"No, it's not what I'm saying!" O'Brien insisted. "If you just let me finish what I'm saying! Once! Just once!"

"Miles, I have to go," Keiko reminded, not to be rude, but she had already heard what he had to say more than once.

"School?" the Chief's face contorted, his voice high-pitched and shrill. "What do you mean school? The war's been over eight months!" And eight months ago, Molly was not in _school._ She hadn't even started_ school._

"Miles," Keiko sighed.

"If you had seen to coming home then," O'Brien insisted, "we wouldn't even be having this conversation, now, would we? True or false? _True,_ or false!"

"True," Keiko nodded. Of course, the point that eight months ago following Sisko's retaking of the station ending Dukat's three month long occupation, found the station in no more livable condition except for the most ardent pioneer, than Dukat had found the station following Sisko's retreat three months earlier, was apparently not a point at all. Which it was a point. Underscored by while Gul Dukat may not have cared, opposed to Captain Sisko's little choice other than to grin and bear until they could get the systems up and working one more time, under no circumstances was Keiko returning to the station until her children could at least be afforded a stable roof over their heads even if they couldn't be afforded too much of anything else.

"Stable?" O'Brien sputtered. "I'll give you stable!" _Beyond_ the fact by the time his family did come home his eight year old marriage would be nine. His seven year old daughter would be eight. And his son would be two. Walking and talking for God's sake.

"He's walking and talking," Keiko nodded.

"That's what I'm talking about!" O'Brien shrieked. "I'm missing the best years of his life!"

"That's not my fault, Miles."

"No!" O'Brien's arm flailed in agreement. "It's the Klingons! The Cardassians! The Jem'Hadar! What do you think? Sisko's _likes_ the fact that what he has is a swinging door? It's not a station. Those aren't airlocks. Or a worm hole. They're swinging doors. One month they swing this way. Next month they swing that way."

"Miles…" Keiko said.

"What I'm trying to tell you," O'Brien insisted. "What I'm trying to explain is what makes the stability in a family is the family unit. We're not a unit! We're apart! Constantly apart. If it's not Earth, it's Bajor. Three months here. Six months there! So, no. It's not a stable environment, you're right, it's not. It has to change, yes, it does. And I'm right when I say it doesn't stand a cat's chance in hell of anything changing with me here and you there."

Keiko was angry. Furious. Her words tumbling over each other. "Miles, I had to tell Molly Ziyal was dead. I had to explain it to her. Not you. Or Kira. Or Captain Sisko. And, no, I don't want her in that _environment,_ you're absolutely right about that!"

"Why did you even have to tell her anything at all?" O'Brien snapped.

Keiko stared at him. He surrendered -- against his will, but he surrendered. "Okay, I guess you had to tell her something."

"Miles, she's old enough to relate to people," Keiko fumed. "You think she's not going to notice? Or ask where Ziyal is?"

"I said all right!" O'Brien barked. "Telling her is one thing! Giving her every last little detail isn't necessary!"

Keiko reached to sever the transmission, he preempted her. "I'm not saying you did, I'm just saying it isn't necessary. And, yes," he granted, begrudgingly, "I guess what I'm asking is how did she take it? What did she say? Did she saying anything?"

"Miles!" Keiko's voice was shrill, never mind his. "She's seven years old. How much do you think she really understands?"

"I think that's my point," O'Brien nodded.

"She's upset," Keiko assured. "She's confused. Concerned about Kira --"

"Kira?" O'Brien's face twisted.

"Miles," Keiko groaned.

"Okay, okay," O'Brien waved, "put her on. Let me talk to her."

"Miles, in Molly's mind Kira and Ziyal are connected."

"They are connected!" O'Brien agreed. Of course, _why_ they were connected he had yet to figure out. But that was something else that was apparently beside the point.

"And Molly was concerned," Keiko insisted, "that Kira was all right. That she wasn't injured or dead," her voice rose again heated and disgusted with the last _two years_ if he wanted to know the truth. "That's perfectly normal. For God's sake, Miles, Kira lived with us for months!"

"I said I understand! Put her on! Tell her daddy wants to talk to her."

"She's in school!" Keiko wailed.

"School?" O'Brien frowned at the console. It was five o'clock in morning.

"There, Miles," Keiko agreed. "Maybe there." _There_, of course. Where she was. On Earth. It was not five o'clock in the morning. More like early afternoon. On some other day. Some other week. Some other year. "I have to go, Miles," she nodded. "I really have to go."

"Go?" O'Brien snorted. "I haven't even been to bed yet and you have to _go."_

Now, that statement unto itself made little if any sense. However, being that Miles was her husband, and she was his wife, Keiko was unable to resist at least asking in her tired and mildly chastising tone, "Why haven't you been to bed yet, Miles?" 

"Because the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor," O'Brien inclined forward in his seat. "Why not get in on the act, you know what I mean?

"I mean," he said as Keiko looked at her through her almond-shaped eyes set in her oval face framed by her straight black hair.

"That's pathetic, Miles," she said, really unable to think of another or better word.

"No, it's not pathetic. What's pathetic is nothing has changed much in four hundred years anymore than anything's really changed four hundred years before that. What's _wrong,_" he continued, "with the whole picture is did it ever occur to you that Sisko just might consent to reopening the school, Bajor just might consent to enrollment if we had a teacher here to teach?"

"I'm not going to lie, Miles," Keiko refused, still burned by Kai Winn's scalding assault of a few years ago for Keiko's audacity to suggest the birth of the Bajoran worm hole had to do with someone's warp engine rather than be the Celestial Temple of the Bajoran Prophets. "It's both, Miles," she nodded.

"Okay, so it's both," O'Brien agreed even though he didn't. "That's my point. I'm not telling you to lie. Not about the worm hole or anything. I'm telling you if you come upon a conflict between the scientific community and someone's religious beliefs present it as an open forum. Take questions and provide answers from both viewpoints. This is not the first time this has happened in the history of the universe, and you're not the first instructor it's happened to. If I can do it, trust me, you can do it also."

"I'll think about it," Keiko shrugged.

"Good! Because I didn't call you to talk about _Kira._ Or _the worm hole._ I haven't been trying to get a hold of you for the last _ten hours!_" _Long before_ it was five o'clock in the morning. More like three o'clock in the morning her time. "To argue! All right? I don't want to argue."

"Neither do I," she agreed.

"Good!" O'Brien said. "Because if you really want to know what I've been doing -- if you really want to know why I've been up all night it's because I've been trying to make heads or tails out of this." He had Damar's proposal in his hand. The forty-third version that made even less sense than the original forty-two.

"And if you want progress," O'Brien clutched the data padd, a desperate man he'd be the first to admit it. "I've got progress. You know what this is? It's Damar's proposal to install a Cardassian Consulate on Bajor.

"That's right, Damar," he assured as Keiko glanced at the padd. "He's here. Aboard the station. Along with Dukat _Junior_, the biggest pain in the left ventricle you'd ever want to meet. Except Sisko's got news for him and so do I. That's right, me," he waggled the padd. "I just happen to be the Federation Consular Representative to the conference. And what _we're_ going to do is end up with is a Consulate. A real Consulate. Sisko's damn bang on with wanting to make sure of that; I agree with him a hundred percent. And if that's not progress, what is? All right? Can you tell me what is?"

"Goodbye, Miles," Keiko severed the transmission. O'Brien couldn't say as he blamed her. It's what the UFP should have done to Damar only they didn't, and now Sisko was stuck with it. As always. As usual. 

The Chief walked into a wall of Shakaar's super-sized canaries and one short, round, fat budgie in front of Quark's twenty minutes later when he showed up planning to get himself a decent (and expensive) breakfast. It wasn't the wall though of yellow jumpsuits blocking his entrance that necessarily caught and held his undivided attention. It was the budgie in his own tailored-to-fit little suit and Mickey Mouse ears carrying a red rose.

"What, are you blind?" Quark sneered as O'Brien brought himself up short, just shy of walking into the wall of the respectable establishment with the twenty foot sign that clearly read_ CLOSED…Because I feel like it _in parentheses underneath. "I can see me coming a light year away."

"You can say that again," O'Brien nodded dumbly at the rose. "A rose?"

"Yes, a rose," Quark sneered. "A rose. What's the matter, haven't you ever seen a rose before? Times are rough, okay? You settle for what you can afford. A rose, I can afford especially when you're footing the bill."

"What?" O'Brien said.

"Look," Quark offered him a piece of cosmic reality. "Barring what I said last night of it'll be a cold day on Cardassia -- of which I meant every word -- at a hundred strips a head, I'd probably wear a pink tutu."

"A hundred strips…" O'Brien echoed.

"We're still in negotiations. The Captain's up to ten, I'm down to a hundred. He's got a long way to go, but so do I," Quark's nod turned from the Chief's growling and empty stomach to this one over here with the pulsating pulse throbbing like a base drum in his left lobe. "It's okay. He's just here for breakfast. His wife's on Earth. He hasn't had a decent meal in a year."

He was a suspicious sort though, this particular Bajoran. Not one to take anything at face value especially when it had soap in its ears.

"Okay," Quark granted as the Chief was looked over from head to toe and back up against just to be certain. "So that's not all he hasn't had. It's six o'clock in the morning. The fact that I'm even awake deserves a round of applause."

"Excuse me?" O'Brien blurted out. Indignantly, Quark might add.

"A decent night's sleep," Quark agreed. "Bacon, eggs, a short stack of pancakes and a double order of hash browns. Toast and raspberry jam on the side. Coffee and orange juice go without saying, but only because I'm already sick enough. Follow me."

"Follow…" O'Brien echoed as Quark waddled away to waddle back with a wail through the assortment of linked armpits for the lead taking its sweet time inside to hurry up and get a move on.

"Anytime soon follow me!" he crooned to the tune of docking their pay.

"Coming, Brother!" Rom tripped his way over the cuffed trousers of his canary suit three sizes too large and six inches too long to pardon his way through the blockade, carrying a tray of data padds, each one promising an individualized mouth-watering culinary experience recently stolen from the Replimat's data banks. The security suits, on the other hand, were the leftover extras donated by Odo just glad to get them out of his office. Not really caring who wore them as long as he didn't have to.

"Which you do." Sisko assured Odo earlier, not to pull rank on his Chief Constable of Security. But it was a matter of security, not only an agreement. Apart from the uniforms could not be replicated -- until someone figured out how -- their color was specifically chosen to set those affiliated with the conference apart from those who were not.

"Hm," Odo grunted at the Captain comfortable in purple. "Explains the regulation Federation dress."

"So it does," Sisko grinned, but then rank had it privileges.

"Apparently so," Odo looked at Kira attractive in red.

"In your dreams," Kira plunked down the stack of gaudy jumpsuits waiting to be distributed to those not-so-fortunate subordinates that included Quark in his official role as Director of Food and Beverage Services. An appointment which made sense. Better the devil in front of your face where you can watch him especially when he'd be in your hair anyway.

"Yes, well, wait a minute," Odo forestalled Quark's escape with an armload of those 'official' yellow suits rather than his assigned one.

"What? Do you expect me to do this alone?" Quark huffed. Counting everyone actually in the conference, he came up with eight hoarse and dry throats to lubricate and feed at least two times a day while they were sequestered in their meeting. As well as those same eight hoarse and dry throats once their meeting was adjourned for the day and they all retired to Quark's for dinner and a few more hours of mutual camaraderie until 2300 or so when Sisko ardently hoped they'd all be sick enough of each other to want to do little more than go to bed to wake up and start all over again the next day.

"Better the devil," Dax grinned at Benjamin with his proposal of keeping their tight, close-knit little group as tight and closely knit together as possible, less showering and sleeping with each other.

"Yes, well," the Human euphemism that sprang to Odo's mind went more like sitting ducks.

"Yes." Sisko agreed and respected both arguments of the potential danger with keeping the group together or keeping them apart. He flipped a coin and decided he was more comfortable with keeping the devil, or devils in the case of Damar and his gang, in front of his face where he could see them, rather than having them strewn around the station, each left to their own amusement and devices.

"Yes, well, now that you put it that way," Odo grunted.

"We agree," Dax nodded.

"Yes," Worf supported.

"That goes double for me," Kira assured, annoyed only that she personally would not be allowed to carry a phaser rifle, or a weapon of any sort.

"Not that we mean to suggest you're as hotheaded as Dukat, or as untrustworthy as Quark or Garak," Dax smiled.

"More like old habits die hard," Odo offered. Which they did. Quark was no exception.

"I'll make a deal with you," Quark proposed. "How many extras do you have?"

"Yes, well," Odo calculated, counting the eight persons actually involved in the conference who did not have to wear them, "eight."

"I'll take four," Quark handed him back two. One for himself that fit remarkably and mysteriously well. Either something to do with that aforementioned ability of someone to work their way around the uniforms inability to be replicated, or the tailor who resided down the hall. Odo suspected the replicator was the answer. Not only based on Quark's history and hence lengthy security file, but also the point that he and Garak were in as much competition with each other for the attention of Doctor Lange as Bashir and the Chief. So far Bashir was winning by a mile, and probably would win if Odo knew his young and spirited Humans; which he did. 

The same as he knew his Ferengi.

"Four," Odo repeated.

"One for myself," Quark reiterated his complaint of only having two hands and therefore the value of family togetherness. "One for Rom." Whose suit didn't fit at all, not surprisingly.

"And as far as the other two?" Odo waited.

"We're coming!" Quark's luscious Bajoran Dabo hostess Leeta tripped her way out behind her husband Rom, stumbling in her six-inch yellow heels and trying to zipper herself up inside her jumpsuit, which on her looked more like a yellow wet suit. Six inches too short and three sizes too small. "Rom!" she wailed despite the army of volunteers rushing to give her a hand, and the fact she was not the only one with a fitting problem.

"Morn?" O'Brien's jaw dropped with the lumbering sight of Morn who came with place like the rest of fixtures, and couldn't even begin to zipper his official suit up past his waist whether or not he ran the risk of being arrested for indecent exposure or just ugly, spotted and gold.

"And you think you've got problems," Quark turned to Leeta with a sympathetic snarl. "What?"

"What, what?" she leaned over to hiss in his face and shoot him a birds-eye view of what may have inspired his brother Rom to marry her if he couldn't think of another reason.

"It's Major Kira's," Quark nodded for her enlightenment. "What did you expect?"

"Major Kira's?" Leeta shrieked. "I'm twice the size of Major Kira!"

"My point exactly," Quark uncovered his ears once the danger was past and walked away.

"Oh," Leeta stayed bent over while she tried to figure that out.

"Oh!" she straightened up once she figured it out, much to the marked disappointment of everyone. "Quark!" she let out a scream loud enough to rattle those famed Cardassian archways like no Quantum torpedo ever could.

"Look," Quark slapped the door of the turbolift in disgust when it failed to show up in time to get him to safety before the galaxy's odd couple caught up with him; O'Brien just sort of following along, mesmerized. "Captain Sisko is a smart man. He isn't commander of the most important outpost in the Alpha Quadrant for no good reason. He got them to agree to proximity detectors, he figured let's not push it with the yellow suits."

"Spare me the algebra!" Leeta silenced him. 

"The what?" Quark looked at Rom for a reasonable translation.

"Um…I think she means adjectives," Rom nodded. "You know, some stupid explanation that no one believes."

"That is exactly what I mean," Leeta insisted. "Quark, I know you!"

"Oh, yeah?" Quark sneered. "Well, try this on for size. If you don't want to do it, there are plenty who do. And I mean plenty," he clued her in to a bit of cosmic news. "But then it isn't every day that he's here, now is it? No, it isn't."

"He?" Leeta's lovely and sculptured Bajoran features furrowed in a frown.

"Yes, him," Quark assured, explaining why she was the Dabo hostess and he was the boss. 

"He?" Leeta straightened up with an excited stage whisper for Rom. "He, who?"

"Mister Damar," Rom nodded, explaining why he was married to a Dabo hostess. "Quark's right. He's not here every day."

"Damar?" Leeta repeated with a confused shake of her head. Probably less surprised if he had said Gul Dukat.

"Yup, and Gul Dukat," Rom nodded. "The two of them."

"His sons," Quark assured Leeta staring at him. "Time off for good behavior, daddy's still looking at a few hundred years."

"Who cares!" Leeta hissed.

"No one I know," Quark agreed with a shrug.

"Oh, for!" Leeta turned on Rom. "Mister Damar?"

"Yup. Legate Damar. Emperor of Cardassia. You know, since Gul Dukat kind of went crazy and ended up where crazy former Emperor's go…" he finished with a wince, blistered by her shriek.

"_MISTER DAMAR?!"_

"Hey, whoa! Whoa!" O'Brien snapped to attention, rescuing the tray of data padds before Leeta tore it from Rom's hands and smacked him in the head with it. "That's my breakfast in there somewhere!"

"If you spent more time working rather than at home with your husband, you'd know what was going on," Quark added to that.

"Oh, yeah?" Leeta delicately ground the spike of her heel down on top of his foot. "Well, I am not waiting on Mister Damar!"

"The job is yours," Quark nodded to Morn after he finished screaming in pain.

It was also Monday morning in the Chief Constable's office. "Where!" Kira's hands slammed down on Odo's desk, her cheeks as red as her uniform and almost as dark as her dark red hair. "Is he?"

"Well…" Odo closed the top of the incriminating stack of evidence decorated in silver foil and crimson bows. "Here, obviously."

"I know he's here," Kira assured. "I want to know what he was doing there, or even knew where there was!"

"Why, Major Kira," Garak cooed, beaming her a cheery and pleasant good Monday morning, "my assigned duty, naturally."

"Clothes," Odo nodded to Kira's poisoned stare over the assortment of boxes. "Toiletries. That sort of thing."

"Not enough for a week, of course," Garak hurried to defend his reputation of a clothier above reproach. "Oh, no, certainly not. Let's not be absurd. But, yes, something for Doctor Lange to wear today for her conference…And, of course," he indicated rather proudly the largest of the four large boxes, "something a little more formal for her to wear for tonight's dinner gathering. A charming, modest little number -- I do pride myself on ensuring the personalities of my clientele are reflected as well as their positive physical characteristics."

"I'll take care of it!" Kira snatched up the boxes, crushing them under her arm.

"Ah, yes, thank you!" Garak lunged forward to stagger backwards, his hand fluttering to his brow. "I trust that you will…Elsewise, to address that mention of yours as to how I knew where to bring Doctor Lange her packages…I assure you I did not. I was quite innocently on my way to deliver them to you, Major…"

"Me?" Kira accused. "You weren't on your way to see me. You were apprehended on Lange's corridor, and I not only want to know why, I want to know how."

"You're quartered on the same deck." Odo muttered out of the side of his face.

"What?" Kira turned on him.

"It was your idea," Odo nodded. "Remember? Added security? That sort of thing?"

"As I assure you, Major," Garak promised, "I had no idea whatsoever I would violate some sort of security force field…"

"I suppose you didn't notice the security either," she sneered.

"Oh, no," Garak assured. "No, I noticed them. Yes, I most certainly did. Certainly difficult to miss, as has been mentioned."

"That's the whole point!"

"Yes," Garak also understood that. "As quite obviously, Major, I just naturally assumed, however foolishly, that their particular responsibility was to ensure your security and safety. I never dreamed you and Doctor Lange would be quartered on the same wing together…or for that matter sharing quarters…" his eyes narrowed slightly. "Are you and Doctor Lange sharing quarters, Major? Certainly, I can understand if you are…As possibly find myself in agreement. After all, Captain Sisko's ability to match shout for shout with General Martok, while it might earn the General's respect, it's not the General's respect he needs; he already has that. He needs his cooperation in not further seeking to inflame either Legate Damar or young Gul Dukat and his younger Lieutenant Pfrann. Surely, Major you do realize this entire situation is highly volatile in every regard."

"Don't worry about Martok," Kira shifted the cumbersome load of boxes from one arm to cram them under her other before she gave up altogether and threw them back down Odo's desk, looking to see what she could do about consolidating the contents into one container, rather than four.

"You call this a modest little number?" she yanked out a light pink drape of fine silk with more straps than back waiting to mold itself to a body.

"No," Garak smiled, "I call that a nightgown. Remarkably comfortable, I might add."

"She doesn't need a nightgown." Kira flung it back in the box, slamming the lid closed and promptly proceeding on to rip off the decorative bows and paper. Apparently under the impression that the stiff ribbon and foil played a role in her inability to flatten the boxes as flat as she might like to -- which was pretty flat.

"Yes…" Garak's attention might be on the boxes, but his thoughts were elsewhere. "I was present for Commander Dax's generous offer of the use of one her nightgowns…A green one, I believe. As well as Chief O'Brien's generous offer of the use of one of Mrs. O'Brien's…any one of Doctor Lange's choosing, but then he's quite right. Mrs. O'Brien isn't here, is she? So how could she complain? Why would she complain, is probably even more accurate. I, for one, seriously doubt if she would mind at all."

"He was making a joke," Kira nodded.

"Oh, yes," Garak was also aware of that claim. "The same, Major, as I am confident Commander Dax's nightgown is as comfortable as anything I might produce…merely a minor difference in size as the Chief also thoughtfully pointed out."

"He's an engineer." Kira offered in O'Brien's defense. An utterly absurd thing to say. Apparently she wasn't as comfortable with the Chief's rather insistent approach as she might like someone, herself possibly included, to think she was.

"With an eye for detail as well as accuracy," Garak smiled. "Physically, Doctor Lange is much closer in size to Mrs. O'Brien than she is to either you or Commander Dax. That's not only obvious, it's true."

"It's not a fashion show," Kira picked up the boxes, "it's a conference."

"Yes," Odo grunted, "so it is. On that note…"

"I'm free to go," Garak anticipated, what with no crime having been committed; merely a misunderstanding.

"Yes, well, wait a minute," Odo delayed Garak's flight to freedom. "You're forgetting something."

"Forgetting something?" Garak glanced down on the mutilated streamers of ribbon and crumbled pieces of torn foil. "Oh, yes, of course."

"You can take that also," Odo agreed, picking up one of those remaining four yellow jumpsuits still neatly folded.

"Oh," Garak said. "Well, yes, all right. If you insist. To whom shall I make the delivery?"

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

"Worf!" Dax woke up with the first blaring strains of Aktuh and Melota one of her favorite Klingon operas, just not at five-thirty in the morning after two hours sleep. Worf huffed, turning the volume down twenty or thirty decibels and retreated back into the bathroom. Fifteen minutes later he was out and hammering on the replicator in a signal the shower was free for her use.

"You don't even like my green nightgown," Dax snitched his coffee with a smile and light kiss for his cheek. He ignored her. She shrugged and headed for the shower for a short-lived few minutes of the water's relaxing massage before Worf was turning the volume back up louder than before. "Worf!"

"That is not the point," Worf's growl answered Dax's shout.

"Well, what is the point?" Dax leaned her head against the wall of the shower with a sigh.

"Oh," she reemerged into the bedroom to find Worf tightly zippered into his own canary wet suit, three sizes too tight and dozen or so inches too short.

"Well, look at it this way," she offered while he stood there stiffly at attention, truly unable to stand any other way even if he wanted to, "right now someone else is just as puzzled as you are."

Worf groaned, the jumpsuit splitting from his neck to his knees from the strain.

"I know," Dax laughed as Worf stared at the tatters of his uniform, "that's not the point."

"No," Worf insisted. "As you are incorrect. It is your blue nightgown I do not like." 

"My blue one?" Dax frowned.

"Yes," Worf assured.

"Oh," Dax shrugged. "All right. I'll take back my green one and give Lange my blue one. That's all you had to say."

No, it wasn't. "Then what is the point of involving Garak if he is not going to follow through with his responsibilities?" Worf demanded.

"He is," Dax promised. From his distinction as official clothier to his appointment as Julian's assistant. 

"Donut?" Bashir offered Garak an hour or so early for the opening festivities.

"No thank you," Garak grimaced, already finding Dukat's suit a little too snug for his preference. "How you can manage to be so alive as this hour of the morning will never cease to amaze me."

"Oh?" Bashir's nefarious grin flashed. "That's not what I heard."

"Really," Garak looked at him. "Yes, well, Julian, I can assure you as I have attempted to assure both Major Kira and Constable Odo, my intent was to supply Doctor Lange with her basic needs as requested. Hardly malevolent."

"Quite," Bashir cracked. "Rather have the same idea myself."

"A point that substantiates Captain Sisko's support of these ridiculous outfits," Garak agreed. "Flagrantly noticeable -- that is until one takes it off."

"Which one can, and one will at 1900 sharp," Bashir assured. "In the meantime I suppose it could be worse."

"Yes." Garak had noticed the motley looking trio busy at the replicator as well as the rose tucked behind the ear of the fourth.

"Kira and the Chief." Julian quite likely correctly identified Leeta and Rom's suppliers. He wasn't as positive when it came to Quark or Morn, though suspected Morn had to be wearing Captain Sisko's discarded nightmare.

"Wrong," Quark walked up to snatch the donut from Bashir hands with a gentle reminder. "Nothing in life is free. You want to eat, I want to see your signature signed on the dotted line."

"Oh, yes." Garak was just about to agree with that, too. Not with Quark's suggestion that Captain Sisko very well might demand supporting evidence to Quark's sure-to-be padded bill of expenses, because of course the Captain would. "But, I believe Quark might be right, Julian," he extended. "As well as telling the truth about Morn's uniform." A disconcerting thought, he realized. However, it did stand to reason, based solely on size alone, Morn couldn't possibly be wearing Captain Sisko's uniform, anymore than Quark could be wearing the one he was wearing, which he was wearing.

"It's called a replicator," Quark assured. "I've got to tell _you_ the rules of the game?"

"Not in the least," Garak was well aware of how for every point there was a counterpoint. 

How for every new and improved cloaked ship out there, there was a new and improved graviton net capable of exposing them.

"Uh, huh," Quark said. "And so forth and so on. It's called ingenuity."

"So it is," Garak smiled. "What you might have to explain however…" he ogled the rose waiting behind Quark's lobe, though seriously doubting if young Gul Dukat even knew or comprehended the meaning of the gesture. Really, Legate Dukat's eldest son did in some ways appear to be a remarkably uninformed young man when it came to all things social and light, quite unlike his father. Another one of those interesting observations Garak had made last evening; there had been so many of them. "To Commander Worf, of course," Garak nodded out loud, "is the whereabouts of _his_ uniform."

"Uh, huh," Quark said. "Spoken by a man caught red-handed by you know who, you know where."

"On the contrary," Garak maintained, "I repeat, Major Kira not only overreacts, she exaggerates."

"This is news?" Quark sneered.

"No," Garak's smile greeted Odo joining them. "Neither is it interesting. What would be interesting is if Major Kira's protective nature extended to Gul Dukat's progeny, which quite obviously it does not. Ziyal was apparently unique."

"Yes," Odo drawled. "I can't imagine why."

"What about how?" Garak suggested, not to give himself an unfair advantage over Quark's romantic efforts, commendable that they were, by causing his immediate competition to be expelled to a security holding cell for succeeding in the impossible where he should have failed in replicating those irreplicable uniforms.

"Yes, well, chances are how," Odo promised Quark, "will find you explaining more than to simply Commander Worf he whereabouts of his uniform."

"Impossible is not a word in my vocabulary," Quark reminded. "Most people would be grateful for the information, but, hey. You want to arrest me? Be my guest."

"A tempting offer," Garak said.

"Which?" Bashir grinned. "To arrest him, or the secret behind replicating our uniforms?"

"Either or," Odo was open.

"It shrank in the dry cleaning," Quark assured.

"I beg your pardon?" Bashir blinked.

Quark shrugged. "Read the cleaning instructions. Irreplicable isn't necessarily irreducible. So unless there's a terrorist group of Ferengi out there waiting their chance, I think we're probably still all safe."

It took the three of them, Odo, Bashir and Garak, a moment to digest that.

"The reference is to height," Quark gave them a hand. "I'm short."

"Oh, yes." Garak not only understood, he could see that.

"Uh, huh," Quark said. "Yeah, well, from where I stand, I wouldn't say the three of you are exactly Klingons among men."

"Oh, no," Garak smiled. "However Mister Worf is."

"Chief," Sisko looked up from his intensive review of Damar's latest revision when O'Brien entered the conference room. "I'm glad you're here."

"Eh, heh," O'Brien missed the joke. "Like I would be anywhere else -- Like I wouldn't be, if I could be," he assured. "What's that?" he indicated the padd in Sisko's hand.

"Damar's made a few changes," Sisko agreed.

"What?" O'Brien sat down with a wearied thunk of his coffee cup on the table. "Oh, come on. How many times can you change a comma? That's all he has left."

"That may be." But Sisko was still counting on him. Shakaar's highly questionable choice of Lange as representative had not escaped him, anymore than the potential danger her naïve outlook presented for herself and others, including the issue at large. And the issue at large…

"I know," O'Brien stopped him. The issue at large was the success of the preliminary talks as from their success just might come others.

"Precisely," Sisko nodded.

"In the meantime if that's not the best example of Cardassian fiction," O'Brien violently stirred his coffee, "my name isn't Miles Edward O'Brien."

"Maybe not the best," Sisko smiled.

"You can say that again. All right, let me see it." O'Brien took the padd, making an effort to wade through the ponderous script one more time before the curtain went up and all eyes turned to the trio seated at the round table rather than on Worf standing in the doorway with Dax.

"I think we may have found your uniform," Dax agreed with Worf eyeing Morn with reasonable suspicion.

"That is my uniform," Worf insisted to Morn busy taste-testing the breakfast buffet.

"What of it?" Quark countered. "If Captain Sisko's didn't fit you, do you really think it was going to fit him?"

"That also probably isn't the point," Dax nodded as Worf turned on his heel to apprise Benjamin of the whys behind his unanticipated costume change.

"In your opinion," Quark cracked Morn sharply on the wrist. "Trust me, if it's been poisoned, we'll know soon enough. And as far as you…" he alerted the canary with the salivating jaws otherwise known as Leeta entertaining her frustrations by spitting on everything that might remotely appeal to those of a Cardassian persuasion. "Stop spitting on everything. I said you didn't have to wait on him, didn't I?"

"Spitting?" Bashir regurgitated, not one for the dramatics, now was he? Even though chances were jelly donuts were a safe bet not to be on Damar's list of ten top favorites.

"Disgusting," Quark picked up the carafe of hot fish juice, but not before Leeta hacked out a particularly good one into that very same carafe. "What did I just tell you?" he sighed as Garak stared and Bashir swooned, groping blindly for a chair.

"I'm not waiting on Damar!" she insisted.

"Okay, so you're not waiting on him," Quark had memorized that part. "Anyone mind if I do? I didn't think so," he nodded down on Bashir stuffing a napkin in his mouth, and made his way forward toward Damar and his assistant appearing with that arguably perfect Cardassian timing. "Coffee, tea, or hot fish juice?"

"What do you _think _he wants?" Kira reared up from behind Damar. Not an easy thing to do considering the top of her head just about cleared his shoulders, but she managed.

"Anyway I could interest you?" Quark wondered in the spirit of spreading Leeta's good will.

"What do you think?" Kira snapped again and he shrugged.

"Some of us dream, others of us do." 

"Yes, we do!" Leeta hacked out another one over his shoulder to the surprise of no one except for maybe the lady in red and the two guys dressed in black as the spittle hit the carafe dead center with a splash.

"You spit in the fish juice," Kira stared from the steaming steel container of foul smelling nectar in Quark's hands to Leeta.

"Apparently you don't have the same je ne sais quoi as your predecessor," Quark advised Damar. "But I wouldn't take it personally. Loosely translated, whatever it is, Dukat's got it, and I'm not so sure you want what he's got. Am I right or wrong?" he solicited Kira's input.

"She spit in the fish juice!" Kira sputtered, not meaning to suggest she was annoyed not to have thought of it first.

"Okay, so she spit in the fish juice," Quark said. "It's not the first time. So, what'll it be?" he returned to Damar and his silent partner.

"What are you? A eunuch?" Leeta snapped.

"Oh, dear God," Bashir's head hit the table with a bang.

"Um…" Rom defended his wife even if he couldn't necessarily control her. "Well, she's right. He doesn't talk much."

"I haven't heard him talk at all," Bashir agreed. "But that wouldn't be a eunuch. That would be a man without a tongue. A eunuch is a man who has been castrated."

"Oh," Rom blushed.

"Quite all right," Bashir said. "Both are archaic and time-honored practices; ancient Earth no exception."

"And here you thought Cardassians were cruel," Garak put in with a smile.

"_Raktajino," _Damar assured Quark, drawing the line at loyalty to the Cardassian Union and drinking someone's bodily functions.

"I had a feeling you were going to say that," Quark nodded. "It's all right. There's still two of you who aren't here yet; it won't go to waste."

"Oh!" Kira snatched for the carafe in fury. "Give me that!"

"It's only Dukat, Major," Damar laughed in reminder.

"Well, if that's the case," Kira gripped the carafe, her knuckles white, and Damar glanced.

"Do it!" Leeta encouraged. "Do it! Kira!" she stamped her foot.

Kira couldn't. She wanted to but the pressures of her position won out over her emotions.

"Well, I can," Leeta reached for the carafe, the pressures of her position at the Dabo wheel occasionally requiring she knock a fellow or two into his next lifetime.

"Leeta!" Rom grabbed her from behind, to drag her away.

"What are you looking at?" Kira slammed the contaminated carafe into the replicator with a snarl for a bemused Garak.

"You, Major," he assured. "I must say I am impressed you even considered it for a moment."

"It was more than a moment," Kira sat down with a reach for the raktajino. She hesitated. "Is it safe?"

"What?" Bashir startled. "Oh, yes. Yes."

"We believe so, anyway," Dax nodded.

"Quite," Bashir grinned. "For the moment. No guarantee once Leeta finds out Martok is also here."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that, Julian," Garak disagreed. "No, I would be far more inclined to believe Leeta would gladly offer her assistance to General Martok in anyway. Something I confess I'm tempted to do myself. I'm sure you understand."

"Don't push it," Kira suggested. "I said I thought about it."

"For longer than a moment," Garak recalled. "Yes. But still you didn't succumb. As neither would I dream of pushing it, Major. I gave Captain Sisko my word, and I stand by my word."

"Especially when neither stops you from applauding someone else's effort," Dax cleverly implied.

"Yes." Garak quite happily accepted the dig. "How very astute of you, Commander. A point dear Leeta made herself. Some of us dream, other us do. You and I, Major," he apologized to Kira, "apparently dream."

He was wrong, of course. Kira spent her life doing. If she lived to be a hundred and forty, of all the sights, she would never forget the sight of the packed dirt marking her father's grave. Nor the sight of the Vedek hanging from the upper level of the Promenade in protest of Dukat's latest attempt to rule the worlds. The monk's harsh words accusing Kira of becoming complacent, worse yet immune somewhere between there and here.

"Immune?" Kira said to Garak. Maybe to their scorn, but never to them, and that included Damar. Another sight she would never forget was Ziyal. Her twenty-one year old life charred by Damar's phaser set to kill, which it did. But then that was the trouble with either dreaming or doing. The fortunate moved onto to their next life with the Prophets. Those less fortunate often found themselves condemned to stand by helpless and watching.

"Immune?" Garak repeated perplexed as to what Kira might be talking about.

"Never mind," Kira shook her head. "Where is he anyway?"

"He?" Garak frowned, also not quite sure which he she meant.

"Who do you think?" Kira snapped.

"Those odds are probably more in Dukat's favor than General Martok's," Dax suggested.

"Oh, yes…" Garak looked around the conference room where young Gul Dukat was not yet in attendance, that was very true. "Yes, I would think so…As I would agree, Major, one would think Gul Dukat would be here, wouldn't one?"

"Even though he still has thirty-five minutes until he's officially late," Dax teased no one in particular, even though she was looking at Kira.

"There's that word again," Bashir refilled his cup of coffee and Kira's with a smile. "Officially. Official. Relax. Dax is right. Dukat isn't required to be here until 0700, none of us are."

"It isn't a question of relaxing," Kira insisted. "Nor a mother thing," she assured Dax.

"A mother thing?" Bashir paused. A pause which Garak supported though Commander Dax was claiming Kira's mothering instincts were relative to Doctor Lange rather than young Gul Dukat.

"Something about last night's conversation you missed?" Dax smiled at Bashir.

"Probably. In all honesty. More than likely much of it intentionally, I confess." The same as he had been paying very little attention to the conversation going on behind him right now with Worf going on about why he was not attired in the 'official uniform' of the conference to Captain Sisko who had other things on his mind. Bigger things.

"Captain," Worf stood stiffly at attention.

"Yes, Mister Worf?" he looked up from his conversation with the Chief. Pausing when he looked up because Worf was not attired in official yellow but instead regulation red.

"There is, of course, an explanation," Worf assured.

"I trust that there is," Sisko agreed. His glance as he waited to hear it brought him beyond Worf to Leeta, Rom and Morn. "It's quite all right, Mister Worf, " he nodded. "I believe I may understand."

"Understanding does not void the purpose of the mandated dress code," Worf insisted.

"I am well aware of the purpose of the dress code, Mister Worf." Much like Major Kira could feel her frustrations rise, Sisko could feel his temper. As much like Major Kira it did not take much. Not today. Not likely for the remainder of the week until the week was over. History. Past. An entry in his Captain's log as well as his personal that with a little luck at its very worst it would be a week of wasted time, forgotten. With a great deal of luck, at its very best? A channel of communication opened.

"My point precisely." Worf was firmly attempting to keep a channel of communication open right now.

"On the other hand," O'Brien's chuckle spoke for Sisko, "his point is the bottom line spells Quark so you're off the hook."

"The Ferengi has stolen Federation property." Worf reprimanded the Chief's disinterest. "He is guilty of theft, as he has clearly managed to successfully replicate the uniform which could pose a danger to us all."

"As can the man, gentlemen!" Sisko interrupted, "speak for himself!"

"What?" O'Brien said. Worf just frowned. But at least Sisko got their attention 

"And that man would be me, Chief," he assured.

"Oh. Sorry," O'Brien apologized.

"No," Sisko shook his head. "Not this time. Today is not last evening, and neither will it be."

"Not a party in other words," O'Brien nodded.

"Chief!" Sisko's fist hit the table hard. If anyone else heard it was probably Dax sitting with Bashir and Garak, none of who felt inclined to suggest they did hear. The rest of them, Kira, Quark, Damar were occupied with the squalling, squabbling Leeta.

"Sorry," O'Brien apologized again.

"A four letter word, as of right now," Sisko said. "Do not confuse undue camaraderie with the simple fact I have no intentions of watching you, my back, whoever stands on either side on me, commingled with a station of six thousand civilians. When I say smile, gentlemen, you will smile. Is that understood?"

"Yes," O'Brien said.

"It is," Worf agreed.

"Good!" Sisko's fist struck the table again, that time satisfied.

"As it is the point of the mandated dress code," Worf reminded.

"Damn the mandated dress code, Mister Worf," Sisko clenched his teeth, "we will make do."

"Also understood," Worf agreed.

"Thank you," Sisko said. "Now would either of you mind telling me just what it is that woman thinks she is doing?"

"Leeta?" O'Brien turned around.

"She appears to be spitting in the fish juice," Worf reported, at a better vantage point than the Chief.

"Spitting in the fish juice," Sisko closed his eyes.

"Girl after my own heart," O'Brien chuckled. Sisko's eyes snapped open. "Sorry!" he said a little too quick, a little awkward trying to back out. "I mean…you know what I mean. Nothing to get worked up about, you're right. Spend twenty minutes talking about. Even though you have to admit…" the Chief attempted to stifle his chuckle, succeeding to an extent. "It's funny. Damn funny. Which reminds me," he pointed out to Worf. "Quark didn't replicate the uniform, he reduced it. You know, shrank it. His. Leeta's…" O'Brien's gaze strayed to Leeta scuffling at the buffet table with Rom. "I'm not too sure about Leeta's…well, actually I am. It's Kira's…" he glanced up at Damar smirking down on them. "What?"

"Practice, Sisko?" Damar's chuckle taunted Sisko's fist resting on the table. "Good. It should be an interesting week."

He walked away with his assistant. There was silence for a moment until Sisko spoke, quietly, the fist pounding over. "That brand of sarcasm, gentlemen, is expected of him. There will not be any further tolerance of it from any of you."

"Got it," O'Brien swore.

"Mister Worf?" Sisko picked up the padd.

"Your point is well made and understood."

"We'll see," Sisko said, not to be pessimistic, more realistic. It was a boiling pot, there was no denying that.

"Independent souls." Was Odo's assessment ten minutes later when Sisko refilled his coffee. The Captain looked at him.

"We're independent souls," Odo clarified. It wasn't an assessment. Not his, personally. Merely a report of Bashir's philosophy of the morning. Dress them all in yellow or pink tutu's it didn't negate the fact they were out in the middle of deep space, a long way from home, whose bottom line of survival and make-do required men and women of strong wills and strong minds, i.e., independent souls.

"What?" Sisko shook his head.

"In other words," Odo offered, "taking everything into consideration, it really hasn't been too bad so far."

"Just get me through the week, Odo," Sisko requested, "and I'll agree with you."

"Consider it done," Odo ogled Worf. "I also doubt if anyone will mistake our Mister Worf for anyone other than who he is."

"So they will not." Sisko took his coffee and returned to the Chief at the table. A sudden sense of foreboding as he moved past the nameless, faceless wall of yellow guarding the conference room both inside and out.

"Something wrong?" O'Brien asked.

"No," Sisko denied. "Merely a flip of a coin which one of us is the Red Coat."

"Red Coat?" O'Brien said uncertainly.

"Red Coat." Sisko stared into the whites of the eyes of the Bajoran directly across from them that in the heat of a moment he would be hard put to tell from the Bajoran standing next to him and so on down the line of those nameless, faceless Special Forces officers thirty strong. The coin turning up HEADS would find them under the protection of those blinding yellow suits. In the event someone could replicate those irreplicable jumpsuits, TAILS could very well find them quite unknowingly under siege from an army of look-a-likes. "That would be the Battle of Bunker Hill, Mister Worf."

"As in Earth's American Revolution," O'Brien chuckled to Worf's concentration.

"I believe I remember the account from the Academy."

"So do I," O'Brien assured Sisko. "The Red Coats lost. I know what you're thinking. I've thought it myself. And like you just said, it's a good idea, or it's a bad one."

"It's a bad one," Odo supported what he said all along. A belief which the Captain had apparently decided he shared even if it meant casting another one of Shakaar's protocols under an unfavorable and questionable light.

"Do you have a better idea?" Sisko asked.

"Apart from Damar's suggestion that on Cardassia this charade would be unnecessary? And General Martok's suggestion that on the Klingon Home World, it would equally unnecessary? No," Odo acknowledged. "Why? Do you?"

"A thought," Sisko nodded slowly. Ten minutes later Odo and Dax weren't the only stripping off those jumpsuits down to their regulation everyday wear.

"Make up your mind," Quark sighed.

"I believe the Captain just did," Odo clapped a phaser rifle into Garak's surprised hand and pinning a communicator on his chest. "Officially, of course, your orders are to shoot first and ask questions later."

"Really…" Garak stared at the rifle in his hand. "And unofficially?"

"No one would be too upset if you took the order to heart," Dax nodded.

"Or made an understandable mistake," Garak agreed, his eyes glistening in Damar's direction; the Emperor of Cardassia up on his feet and bellowing in complaint.

"No, chances are they wouldn't be." Odo slapped a rifle into Paq's flailing arms flailing in support of his Majesty's roar with a nod to Damar. "If I were you, I'd keep that in mind."

"What?" Damar aborted his howl to stare at his armed Second in Command.

"Heavily armed, I might add," Garak smiled, not to add fears of mutiny to Damar's long list of concerns.

"Wouldn't dream of it," Odo grunted with a nod for Rom hovering at his elbow. "What?"

"Leeta," Rom reminded with an unnecessary indication of her particular jumpsuit stretched as tight as a second layer of skin under which would probably only be found skin rather than a change of clothing. 

"Yes, well, chances are it is a little too early at that." Odo supposed spitting was a far better choice of breakfast entertainment than an impromptu striptease even though the Ferengi preferred their females naked. The woman wasn't Ferengi, anymore than her partner in crime. "Definitely too early." Odo included Morn's equally snug and plunging neckline in that determination.

"I'll second that." Kira held out her hand in anticipation of? "What do you _think?"_ she said. "Give me the rifle."

"Yes, well," what Odo thought and what Captain Sisko ordered probably found him arming Garak and Damar before handing her a phaser rifle. No slight intended toward those dreamers as opposed to doers.

"You armed Garak and Damar," Kira stared at him.

"Or at least Damar's assistant," Odo granted since Mister Damar had already proven himself more a doer, rather than a dreamer, at least to an extent.

"What are you saying?" Kira insisted. "You don't trust me?"

"No," Odo wasn't saying that at all. Apart from the station's weapons array had been restored to perfect working order since she destroyed it, the only two choices Kira had during Dukat's most recent occupation was to defy the ordered Bajoran agreement of No Resistance and sabotage the array, or to complacently stand by and accept Dukat's latest occupation.

"That was a year ago," Kira argued, still annoyed with herself that she had even attempted to complacently stand by before deciding once in the Resistance, always in the Resistance.

"Seems like only yesterday," Odo agreed with the woman who had spent almost as much time in his office and/or Dukat's as Quark had over the last ten years.

"_Sisko's_ office," Kira corrected coldly. "Captain Sisko's office."

"If you believe in fairy tales," Odo grunted. "And imposed life sentences." 

"What are you saying?" Kira demanded.

Nothing that hadn't been said before. But for a quirk of genetics Dukat was Cardassian, not Vulcan. Average life expectancy barring wars, occupations, assassination attempts and general annoyance, was approximately half that of a Vulcan's four hundred years. Against those staggering odds the nefarious Gul had managed to make it past the first fifty or so, suggesting the universe would far more likely not be free of him until his shield was planted down next to his own packed mound of dirt, and probably not even then. Something to do with what Dukat lacked in personal immortality, he made up for in siring his own baseball team.

"Actually, I believe a baseball team has nine players," Bashir offered like he was the expert rather than Captain Sisko.

"Close enough," Odo assured, confident there was a probably another Dukat or two out there as yet unacknowledged or accounted for, and even if there wasn't, the point stood. Damar could kill one. He could kill the two of them there. There were still five more behind them.

"Something else to keep in mind," Odo mentioned to Damar should he decide he was comfortable with sitting, standing and sleeping with his back to his loyal servant, otherwise known as his now heavily armed assistant Mister Paq as Dukat had obviously been comfortable with trusting his Mister Damar.

"Oh, please," Damar rolled his eyes, at least as outwardly confident as his former master, however foolishly they would have to see. "My point to you and Sisko stands. Protection is one thing, Constable. Nonsense is quite another. And all of this nonsense, none of it, would be necessary on Cardassia Prime."

"Nor on the Klingon Home World," Odo nodded, having just reiterated those two points of view to Captain Sisko.

"What!" Damar hissed, "does the plight of the Cardassian-Bajoran population have to do Gowron?"

"Who knows," Odo shrugged, if you asked him. If one asked General Martok?

"Who knows," Odo shrugged. Martok's answer wasn't nearly as clear and concise as his statement.

"I am asking you," Damar barked. "And, yes, Sisko!"

"And I'm answering you," Odo assured. "As has Captain Sisko. Who knows. I suspect you have to be a Klingon to understand."

"We do not trust you," Worf volunteered when Damar turned on him. "Where you are, we want to be."

"Sounds pretty clear and concise to me," Dax nodded to Kira sitting down with a huff and a jealous eye for Dax's rifle. "You're a member of the conference, remember? Not the security staff?"

"Sounds more like the pot calling the kettle black to me," Kira snapped back at her. "Yes, I know I'm a member of the conference."

"And therefore you probably stand a better chance of learning the Vulcan death pinch by 0900 than you do with talking Sisko into giving you a rifle," Bashir joked, sitting back down with his smile and a touch of curiosity. "What do you mean the pot calling the kettle black?"

"Yes, Major," Garak would also like to know, his intrigue peaked as well. "Whatever do you mean? Surely not if one were to follow the last thirty months back, it would be the Klingons who were at fault, after all? Gul Dukat's ultimate response, not only understandable, but justifiable?"

"Justifiable?" Kira scoffed. _"Justifiable?_ To whom? Himself? What else is new!_"_

"Eliminating the Bajoran factor of his desires, of course," Garak calmly bowed his head. "There I'm sure you'll find he simply cannot help himself. Never has. And likely never will. But, yes, as far as the Klingons, Major. Justifiable. In all honesty, self-defense."

"We're not in negotiations with the Klingons!"

"No," Garak smiled. "We are as always, as usual, far more preoccupied with your world. I wonder why that is?"

"You're asking me?" Kira snatched up her coffee. "Ask Dukat!"

Garak's smile broadened. "For that matter Mister Damar, Major. Or for that matter myself, yes. An answer, much like Mister Worf's…I'm certain you would have to be Cardassian to understand."

"Power," Dax shrugged. "Greed. What's so difficult to understand?"

"Very little as far as Gowron and his Empire. You're right, Commander," Garak agreed. "As far as we Cardassians? The artistic temperament apparently. To which the answer no will always be a personal rejection."

"In other words," Quark tossed in along with tossing his yellow suit down on the table, "what the Klingons want, Dukat needs. Kind of like a Ferengi and latinum."

"In other words," Bashir corrected, "he's as spoiled as you are who's as spoiled as Martok and Gowron."

"Talk about the pot calling the kettle black," Quark sneered. "There but for genetic enhancement you could be Morn and he could be you."

"Hardly generous or self-effacing, you're right," Bashir laughed, raising his raktajino in toast and good cheer. "To the spoiled, and the spoils of the spoiled. Quite frankly, I wouldn't have it any other way. Would you? Or you?" he asked Garak. "Or for that matter," he turned to Kira, "would you?"

"Maybe I can learn the Vulcan death pinch by 0900," Kira eyed her coffee cup.

"Maybe you can," Bashir supported with a check on the time.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

"Where is he?" Damar's silent partner spoke as the time ticked closer to 0700 and neither Dukat nor his brother had yet seen to gracing the conference room with their presence.

"Preparing to make an entrance," Damar scoffed undisturbed and disinterested as he scrolled through his proposal for one last final review. "What do you think?"

"What or where?" Paq's voice was coarse, dry, knowing and assuming. Their eyes met; something clicking in the back of Damar's photographic memory. A downed transport. A story of the remnants of a Bajoran Township all but destroyed by Klingons and Rigelian fever. It was two months before First Minister Shakaar saw to allowing the Cardassian Union across the border into Bajoran Space to reclaim their own.

"You should have known," Paq criticized, speaking the words Damar spoke only last evening, his hand positioned on Damar's wrist to stay his Emperor's outrage and keep it from exploding.

"I was talking about Martok," Damar choked, now sputtering about someone else. "That stupid idiot! Dukat! Of course, Dukat!"

"You could kill him," Paq nodded.

"Kill him?" Damar scoffed, the heavy cords of his throat throbbing. "The fool knows!"

Paq frowned. "Sisko? He seems more preoccupied with you."

"With good reason," Damar said. "Shakaar, you fool. Shakaar, not Sisko. Read the writing on the wall. The child is no one. She comes from no where. And, yes, now," he cursed bitterly, "now, it all makes sense. _She _makes sense," his blistering stare met Dukat's expressionless face coming through the door. He ignored his Emperor, but then he always did. It was two minutes past the agreed hour of seven. Ten minutes earlier he had been reluctantly kissing his lover goodbye. Like father, like son.

"If you're right," Damar cursed Paq.

"If?" Paq was annoyed by the question. 

Damar sneered. "Anon may just like the attention. Tora Naprem was a Bajoran prisoner of war on a Cardassian transport. Dukat went in search of the Ravinok with intentions of killing her and the child. Everyone seems to forget that…Everyone but me." He settled back remembering something else; that phaser rifle in his assistant's hand. "Don't even think about it."

Paq was shocked by the suggestion, of course he was. "My loyalty is sworn."

"Of course it is," Damar agreed sarcastically. "So is mine. We're all just artists as the tailor proposes. Our temperaments occasionally getting in our way…" he eyed Kira suddenly jumping to her feet and disappearing from the room on a run.

"I believe she may have just remembered Lange is waiting for her clothes," Dax explained Kira's sudden and hurried departure to Bashir and Garak.

"Well, I attempted to explain that to her, Commander," Garak sighed. "I certainly did. But you know Major Kira as well as I."

"I know Kira knows you."

"Really," Garak said. "And what could my interest actually be in Doctor Lange?"

"Personally or professionally?"

"Professionally, naturally," Garak smiled. "I believe you'll find any personal interest to be that of someone else other than myself…"

"Here, here," Bashir raised his hand.

"Not withstanding Julian's interest," Garak agreed.

"Yes, well, the Chief…" Dax attempted to say.

"Is hardly joking, Commander," Garak cautioned. "Oh, no, I doubt very much if Chief O'Brien is. While he may not be serious, he is far from joking. Oh, yes, I seriously doubt that_. _But then I hazard to suggest Doctor Lange is quite likely an extraordinarily attractive young woman. I mention this because even being Cardassian, the artistic eye, Commander, while it may not fully comprehend or understand a subject of its attention, can appreciate its existence and contribution to the otherwise dull scenery."

"A rose is a rose is a rose," Bashir summed up quite nicely.

"Yes," Garak said. "A rose is a rose." And no, young Gul Dukat did not know what a rose was, or why the Ferengi Quark might be wearing one stuffed behind his left ear.

"We meet again," Quark practiced on Anon studying the breakfast buffet.

"What's that thing?" Anon ignored him for the thorned green stem with its shrunken red bulb bobbing in time with Quark's coyly arching eyebrows.

"Ever hear of an ice breaker?"

"An ice breaker?" Anon thought of the emaciated green stem pitted against a glacier. "That doesn't make any sense."

"Stick around," Quark invited. "Maybe you'll learn something."

"From you? I doubt it," Anon picked up the coffee with a snort. "No, I don't want this. Where's the fish juice?"

"Oh, Leeta!" Quark sweetly bellowed.

"I said I'm not!" Leeta hammered up to them on her titanium stilts, dragging Rom behind her trying to help her zipper into new and equally attractive jumpsuit. "Oh, it's you." She stopped when she saw it was Anon; Rom banging off her shoulder blade.

"OW!" Rom grabbed his nose.

"Sorry, Romiekins," she tweaked his lobe, took the coffee away from Anon and began clearing random plates from off the table. "No, you don't want any of this; I know exactly what _you _want. "

__

"Romiekins?" Quark scowled as Leeta tripped away to the replicator.

"It's a Human term of endearment," Rom giggled.

"Human?" That was information Quark could use. "I'll make a note. Where were we?" he returned to Anon. "Never mind, I know. Apparently you do have the same je ne sais quoi as your father."

He was met by silence and a penetrating stare.

"Pheromones," Quark inclined forward with a confidential offer of assistance. "Hormones. Sex appeal. Call it what you like. You ooze. You drip. They drop."

"I have sex appeal?" Anon repeated slowly to his brother, uncertain if his universal translator had shorted out entirely or what was going on.

"Hard to believe, isn't it?" Quark agreed. "I'm standing here talking to a guy who looks like a constipated bullfrog -- trust me, it's hard to believe."

"What is he talking about?" Anon insisted to Pfrann.

"Explain it to him," Quark said with a flick of his head. "He'll understand it better coming from you…if not, I've got a Library of holo-programs, we'll work it out."

"No," Anon dismissed wasting time on nonsense. "We're here for a purpose -- "

"What are you adopted?" Quark insisted.

For all the constant and irritating comparisons to his father, the suggestion that he was not his father's son stung Anon like a slap in the face.

"Anon…" Pfrann muttered a warning reminder that Sisko was a table away and watching closely.

"Something I said?" Quark straightened up with a wary step backwards.

"Hungry," Anon inclined forward over the buffet. "I am hungry. I want food and I want fish juice now -- and I wouldn't spit in it, if I were you." His hand struck a plate in demonstration before he walked away.

"Should I make that for two?" Quark turned to Pfrann with a shrug.

Pfrann looked at him. The neck coiled forward, his hand plucking the rose from behind the Ferengi's ear, a coy, sardonic smile staining his thin lips as he held the rose out. "We meet _again."_

"That's more like it," Quark approved.

"What's the matter with you?" Anon's fist caught Pfrann in the chest when he sat down.

"I felt like it," Pfrann shrugged.

"No, you didn't just feel like it. That's what everyone expects of you."

"So what," Pfrann slouched in his seat.

"Sit up!" Anon snapped and Pfrann looked at him.

"It's a notice of appreciation," he sat up straight. "The rose. It's for Janice."

"No, I thought it was for me," Anon agreed sarcastically. "I know what a notice of appreciation is."

"It's a Human tradition," Pfrann jaw tightened. "That's all I meant."

"Then why are you talking about Janice?" Anon insisted.

"I just told you," Pfrann sputtered. "It's a Human tradition. She's Human!"

"I also know that," Anon assured.

Pfrann groaned. "Never mind. Just don't hit the Ferengi when he gives it to her." Because_ that_ he highly doubted if any of Sisko's staff expected from either of them regardless of any other speculations.

"Quark?" Anon blinked at Quark, started to chuckle and broke out into a laugh. "No, it's not from Quark, it's from me."

"You?" Pfrann said tiredly.

"Yes, me," Anon assured. "It's for Janice, it's from me. I look at her, she'll know that. I don't have to hit anyone."

"I don't think that's the way it works."

"I don't care how _it_ works." Anon picked up Damar's proposal to scan through it. "That's the way it is. I can't read this stupid thing." He threw the proposal down with an anticipatory look around. The woman approaching though was the Bajoran Leeta, a fresh carafe of hot fish juice on her tray. She hesitated with Anon's accepting nod.

"I said thank you," Anon reiterated.

"Rom's my husband," Leeta almost pleaded.

Her request for his discretion in mentioning his father's and hers questionable past association puzzled him even though he knew what she meant. If he meant to be reassuring it didn't come across that way. "Yes, and?"

Leeta flushed angrily. "Okay, fine, be that way!" she slammed the tray down and stalked off. Anon shrugged with a reach for the carafe.

"It must be something with their race."

Pfrann rolled his eyes. "Anon…"

"I know who she is," Anon silenced him. "The length of the list, whose name is at the top of it and why. Control. He lives for it. That's all. What?" he looked up at the Changeling meandering over to nod down.

"Everything all right?" Odo just wondered.

"It's fine," Anon assured. "You?"

"Never better," Odo agreed. Particularly since having taken a second refresher look through those old Cardassian security logs available. The ones that included more than the occasional mention of all those impressionable young associations throughout his Eminence's ten year reign. 

Anon's sigh was impatient. "I was a child at the time of Legate Dukat's appointment as Prefect. I scarcely remember it. Him. Or Bajor. Pfrann wasn't even born."

"Before my time also," Odo acknowledged. "An auspicious occasion nevertheless. By tradition, one that would include the family's participation -- as would its anniversary."

"Don't tell me about my world, or my life. I told you I don't remember."

"Yes, well, remember the station is probably guaranteed," Odo reminded him of that enduring Cardassian memory. "Recognize it is another thing." Despite that enduring Cardassian tradition of studied elegance, equilibrium and harmony in architecture. Producing such unforgettable triumphs as those famed Cardassian archways and ore bays. Whose perfect placement to one another ensured the harmonious and perfectly balanced flow of energy, by any other name the blood and sweat of the Bajoran labor force, throughout the occupation.

"I can't recognize something I've never seen," Anon insisted. "I don't care whose logs contradict me. I am telling you I have never been aboard this station before in my life."

"No." So Odo understood, his gaze moving to include Quark. "By all available accounts you weren't. By those same accounts who was, was Pfrann…That probably had something to do with despite what the younger one might remember from his days as a toddler, the elder one could understand as well as report."

"It slips my mind," Quark shrugged.

"Probably a good idea all around," Odo nodded.

"There has to be a better way." Janice sunk down on the floor of her quarters, the room spinning cartwheels as the transporter beam faded away leaving her and her molecules intact except for a dizzy head and upset stomach.

__

"Janice?" Anon's distorted voice crackled through the air.

"I'm fine," Janice she smiled at her security bracelet lying waiting for her three feet away.

__

"I love you." he said before the transmission failed.

"I love you," her fingers closed over the bracelet, closing her eyes for a minute or so as well…it couldn't have been any more than five minutes before the sound of the door buzzer had her eyes snapping open. The buzzer sounded again and Janice sat up with a start, grabbing up the security bracelet to put it on; it was engaged. Locked and secured.

"Anon!" she jumped up with a groan, trying to force the bracelet down over her hand.

"Janice?" Kira rang the buzzer a third time. "Janice, it's Kira."

"I'll be right there!" Janice dashed for the shower and a sanitizing spray for her hair, yanking off her nightgown to yank on her tunic and tights. She was dressed, all but for her shoes when she answered the door with breathless and hopeful apologies. "It came off in the middle of the night?"

"What?" Kira looked from the water dripping off the ends of Janice's hair to the arm she extended with the security bracelet crammed tightly around her hand.

Janice sighed. "You're right. It's my fault. I didn't realize if I closed it, I wouldn't be able to get it back on…"

"No, it's my fault," Kira interrupted. "I remembered I forgot your clothes and I came up here to get them…and forgot them again…" she frowned at the bracelet. "It came off?"

"Oh," Janice said. "Well, yes. Apart, actually. I'm really not sure how…" she pulled the bracelet off her hand that was reddened and starting to swell from trying to force the bracelet back on. "I clipped it back together to see if it was broken, never thinking I wouldn't be able to open it again…But I guess that really wouldn't make too much sense if I could, would it?" she stopped again, her eyes staring innocently back at Kira shaking her head.

"Hopeless. You're hopeless."

"I'm hopeless?"

"Yes!" Kira laughed. "Look at you!" From her wet hair dripping down the front of her tunic, to her stocking feet, to the stack of data logs piled on the couch and floor. "It's seven o'clock." 

"Oh," Janice grimaced. "Well, I guess I also sort of lost track of the time…"

"It's all right," Kira took the bracelet away from her with a nod toward the bathroom. "Go -- well,_ dry_ your hair. I'll get your clothes…stop by the security office…" she frowned again at the bracelet that lookedperfectly fine to her. "The magnetic sequencing probably just needs to be adjusted…"

Kira remembered the bracelet, but walked right by her own quarters for the second time forgetting Lange's clothes. 

"Are you sure it isn't deliberate?" Dax teased when Kira showed up with Lange a half an hour late for breakfast, but in time to take her place in line for Julian's blood screening. "Not that I don't agree with you. She doesn't have to be a fashion plate to get her point across…"

"We _meet _again." Quark sauntered up with a frosted mug from which protruded the now wilting rose.

"Or to quicken anyone's pulse," Dax said.

"Iced raktajino," Quark identified the cool refreshing potion for Janice. "All the right people drink it. In occasionally the wrong places, but they still drink it."

"Really…" Along those lines of right and wrong Garak was horrified to see the young woman wearing the exact ensemble she had worn the evening before regardless of Julian's rather generous proposal that they look upon the dismal beige tunic as Doctor Lange's official uniform. "After all, Major, I am confident even you change your uniform from time to time. The occupation is over; has been for years."

"No, I sleep, eat, and drink iced raktajino in them -- What's this?" Kira snatched the rose out of the mug, a frozen thorn puncturing the fleshy mound of her thumb deeply enough to draw blood.

"Sharp," Quark nodded.

If Odo was of the mind to record a personal observation of the opening session of the latest round of historical Federation-Bajoran-Cardassian talks it probably would not have included however reserved on the outside Gul Dukat might appear to be, he was clearly still feeling giddy on the in. The plight of the Bajoran-Cardassian war population about the farthest thing from his mind. In retrospect, Odo's failure to take such notice probably came under the same category as everyone else's failure to take such notice. Garak was right. Canary yellow wasn't the only thing blinding to the eye. So was that woven black and silver armor of the Cardassian tunic. If there was anything extraordinary to report it might be a begrudging mention of how the first day went better than anyone anticipated.

A great deal better considering the first few opening minutes. At 0900 sharp, having all once again successfully proven their status as solids, the small entourage of diplomats left the conference room to move along the corridor for the station's main auditorium. A round table symbolically set up for the three main players of the drama in the center of the amphitheater before her ring of bleachers, ended up seating four as Dukat decided his brother's place was at his side, rather than observing from the sidelines. Likewise being that the proposal on the table was Cardassian in origin, the nature and length of any opening speech was at Dukat's discretion. A sentence in length, it was remarkably short and to the point, presented with a predictable insufferable grin for Doctor Lange and Chief O'Brien. "Any questions?"

"Oh, here we go." The Chief's muttered response was also predictable, along with his he's-starting-already look for Sisko sitting in the bleachers. The Captain's only response was a slow, shake of his head in silent reminder to the Chief of those two golden rules of not biting the baited hook, or charging the red flag like a maddened bull, whichever was more applicable to the Chief's particular personality.

"Got it," O'Brien shuffled in his seat, settling for countering with a diplomatic retort. "Of course we've got questions."

A position ardently embraced by Doctor Lange. "Who's going to pay for all of this?"

A reasonable question that had Kira up out of her seat like a shot and down into the arena before the Chief finished stammering in shock. "Pay for…" As apparently even he knew one never broached the subject of cold, hard latinum during diplomatic arbitration. That came at some point afterwards when business took over where signed, sealed mutual agreement left off. Figuring out how, where, and from whom they were going to get the funding needed to fund the agreed upon fund. Risky, as more often than not the bottom line proved too steep for even the deep pockets of the Federation leaving the agreement dead at conception. Still, the order of things made sense. It was illogical to hold budget hearings before one even knew what one was being asked to fund.

Kira's unspoken point as she intervened with a friendly offer of advice for Lange. "I think it's better if we just all begin at the beginning."

"Oh, yes," Lange merely had a different opinion on what constituted the beginning. "Well?" she turned back to the equally startled Gul Dukat.

"Well?" Anon repeated. "You expect me to answer that?"

"No, she doesn't expect you to answer," Kira said.

"Yes, I do," Janice nodded and Kira's head snapped back around to stare at her.

"No, it's all right," Anon snapped to attention with hurried reassurance for Kira. Odo wasn't quite sure why, but he was sure he would find out. '"It's a good question. A very good question…" he reached for Damar's proposal being stuffed in his hand by his brother Pfrann. "Why? Doesn't it say in the proposal?"

"No," Janice said.

"Are you sure?" he frowned through the scrolling pages.

"Of course I'm sure," she laughed with a teasing waggle of her copy of Damar's effort to date. "Did you even read this?"

"Some of it," he handed his padd back to Pfrann with a shrug. "It's all right. I'll find out the answer for you -- what?" he said to Kira's annoyed snatch of the padd out of Lange's hand to shake it at him.

"You didn't even read your own proposal?" 

"It's not my proposal," Anon was set to retort when a sudden wicked thought entered his mind. The spiraling downward fall of Legate Damar. The verifying question for Lange was calculated and obvious. "Why? You think it's expensive? Too expensive?"

"Well, I think it's probably expensive," Janice agreed.

"And we should pay for it," Anon encouraged her deeper into his web.

"It's your idea," Janice reminded him.

"Damar's idea," Anon smiled under the rapt attention of the occupants of the bleachers and the round table. "All right. I will find out exactly how much money Damar has to spend on Bajor that the Union doesn't have for its own people."

The Chief slammed his padd down, Sisko countering with another slow, discreet shake of his head. Lange's failure to identify Dukat's intent was not the Federation's problem. Odo was set to rest back on his laurels. A decision that proved to be premature.

"Don't try to be clever." Janice suggested, some might say desperately, they would have been wrong. "They are your people."

"All right, our people," he waved, bored with Damar and eager to move onto talking about anything while secretly thinking about other things. Such as her hair dragging across the table as she stretched towards him. "Our people, you're right." Whose people wasn't his point. His point was the expense Damar was prepared to incur. It paled by comparison to what he just said. In fact, you could hear that proverbial pin drop in the room.

"What?" Anon asked absently of Kira staring at him.

Her statement was slow to the point of almost holding her breath. "Are you saying you recognize Cardassia's responsibility for the Bajoran-Cardassian population?"

"What?" Anon's gaze shifted to Janice straightening up with what some might say a coy smile, they would be right.

"Well, do you?" Janice asked. "It makes no sense to propose a consulate for a people you don't recognize."

Anon hesitated, but then he shrugged. Comfortable that if anyone could rest on his father's highly publicized indiscretion, he could. A luxury that did not necessarily apply to Damar. "Yes, I recognize them. I just said I did. Why? You want that, too? Mark that down," he instructed Pfrann. "Shakaar wants recognition of the Bajoran-Cardassian population. Legate Damar agrees. He recognizes them."

"Dukat!" Damar jumped to his feet.

Anon ignored him for Kira and Janice. "You're right. It makes no sense to propose a consulate for a people we don't recognize. Therefore we must. Damar must."

"A point, Legate," Sisko could feel a grin creasing his cheeks as his head turned slowly towards Damar. It was a monumental moment in history, for the moment, anyway. Sure to be remembered differently by each of the conference Advisors and Assistant Advisors and presiding security staff that included Odo, Dax, Worf and Legate Damar's personal assistant Paq.

As it was certain to lose much of its impact and/or significance by 1300, the scheduled hour for lunch. Four hours certainly ample enough time for any Cardassian worth his membership in the Union to figure his way around, weasel his way out of most anything.

"That may be, Constable," Sisko nodded to Odo's skepticism. "That may be."

"Then there are Dukat's own reasons to take under consideration," Odo ogled his Eminence the Emperor Damar who also looked remarkably like a bull frog in pain, or whatever it was Quark had said. Reasons that were fairly evident. If Damar was as lucky a man as his unlucky predecessor Dukat, he just might live to be exiled once the Civilian Council got wind of that particular concession of his. As well as Central Command. The True Way and the average Cardassian on the street.

"Also true, Constable," Sisko nodded. "Also true."

"Still, I suppose there's nothing wrong with wallowing in the moment," Odo grunted.

"No, there most certainly is not." There was a spring in Sisko's step as he stepped to join Major Kira at the growing round table as she also decided to stay around for a little while. Damar remained in the bleachers, listening to his assistant's chastising critique of the meeting thus far.

"The woman is nothing? She comes from nowhere?"

"Shut up," Damar suggested. A good one. Plotting the demise of one's adversary while in the presence of the Chief Constable of Security was not generally in one's best interest. The exception to that rule was Dukat's apparent plot to depose Damar. As far as either of them Odo would have to make a concerted effort to respond in a timely fashion. Lange was another story. 

CHAPTER NINETEEN

"Anything else?" Anon asked Kira as well as Lange.

"Not at the moment," Kira handed Janice back her padd, pulled up a chair, parking herself directly behind her. She joined by Captain Sisko parking himself behind O'Brien.

"Do you want…" the Chief extended his padd.

"No, that's fine," Sisko declined, there only to observe. "What about a census, Major?" he smiled at Kira. "Doctor Lange made an interesting point last evening about the estimated percentage of the Bajoran-Cardassian population." 

Lange snapped her fingers in waking agreement, apparently still deliberating Anon's question in her mind. "Oh, yes, we need a census."

"Okay, we need a census," Kira said.

"And I hate to use the word enforce," Janice winced, checking off her list of notes. "So I'm just going to say I think we should also have a Federation arbitrator examine Bajoran criminal and civil laws as they are written to insure they at least come close to the Articles of Federation guidelines…The best example of morality and legality of equality I could find," she explained to Sisko nodding.

"A excellent suggestion, Doctor. The Articles of Federation are a blueprint for social accord. I can foresee no conflict between them and Bajoran law or religious considerations. To the contrary, Bajor has enjoyed a successful bid for admittance into the Federation in the past, one sure to be reinstated hopefully in the not too distant future. In the interim, it is merely a matter reopening the applicable areas of the Bajoran petition for review to ensure any necessary amendments remain firmly in place."

"Someone such as Odo," Janice proposed for the Federation arbitrator. Certain the UFP would not only be able to find such a person, but understand what she meant. Which, admittedly no, neither Sisko, Kira, nor the Chief did.

"Odo?" The three of them turned around to stare quizzically at Odo.

"Yes, a Federation arbitrator," Janice busied herself persuading Anon. "What are you huffing about now?"

"Odo?" Anon scoffed.

"Not because he's a Changeling," she laughed. "Honestly, Anon, what do you think? _Bajor's_ now in secret negotiations with the Dominion to overthrow you and the Federation?"

"Why Odo?" he insisted.

"Because he's one of your father's better ideas," she proudly pointed out her notation with a smile before Kira grabbed the padd back to see what moral deviate dared to write 'good idea' and 'Dukat' in the same sentence.

"Major?" Sisko asked, intrigued himself.

"No, it's just a personal note to herself," Kira waved in disgust. "Where does she get these ideas?"

She was not alone in wondering that.

"What is she talking about now?" Damar muttered to Paq. Considering just five minutes ago Lange succeeding in getting Dukat to acknowledge, orally anyway, the Union's recognition of the Bajoran-Cardassian war orphans, Odo couldn't say as he blamed the Legate for his suspicions.

"I'm one of Dukat's better ideas," Odo complied.

"Dukat?" Damar snorted, finding that concept equally laughable. "Until one examines the reasons."

"Yes, well, apparently one's reasons don't count," Odo reminded. "Not yet anyway. Certain we'll find out when they do, if not what they are…that includes yours." He ogled Commander Dax unable to resist contributing her own special brand of humor into the debate.

"What were Dukat's reasons?"

"Who knows," Odo grunted. Undoubtedly changing with each breath his former Eminence took and boiling down to he felt like it at the time, the same as everything else. A belief apparently upheld by his eldest son in contrast to Lange's viewpoint of Odo being the closest example Dukat could find of a Neutral at his disposal.

"That sounds about right," Odo agreed with Lange there. It was the part about Dukat exhibiting a sense of fairness he had just a little hard time swallowing.

"Why did Dukat employ you?" Commander Dax asked the same question she asked before, simply in a different way and that time with a frown.

"Who knows," Odo gave her the same answer he gave her before, pointing her curiosity towards a young man possibly better informed than he.

"No, no, no," Anon was emphatically shaking his head over his father's far and wide search for a Neutral to insure any accused member of the Bajoran work force had an equal and fair opportunity to die by public execution rather than during interrogation. "I told you before, my father employed Odo because he was weak. Malleable."

Untrue, but Odo could see Dukat believing that.

"Fairness?" Anon outright gagged in disbelief. "My father was Prefect of Bajor. He didn't have time, nor any reason to even think about being fair -- to whom?"

"Well, he had to have some sort of reason," Janice stubbornly insisted. "Odo was neutral, your father did know that, and I don't understand where you get this idea of Odo being weak. He was employed to oversee the civilian work force -- occupied peoples who applauded and recognized him for his efforts. Why would they do this if he was your father's puppet as you seem to think?"

"How do I know?" Anon groaned. "My father spent his life trying to figure out Bajor, why they do this and don't do that. You think I can tell you? I can't."

"Well, I do know," Janice assured, "and they wouldn't. Odo wasn't a puppet. He wasn't weak, he was strong. A talented and gifted man, capable of maintaining his neutrality in a situation where few would be able to. Exactly the type of person Bajor and Cardassia both need to review Bajoran law as it is now written. Ensure any amendments as Captain Sisko states remain in place so that, yes, if the ratified law of this agreement needs to be enforced, it _can_ be enforced without having to spend the next fifty years mired in red tape."

"No, it's not going to take fifty years." Anon was back to shaking his head. "Ask Sisko, I told him. Not years, not a week. Two days. All of this will be resolved. You have questions, address them to me."

"Two days?" Janice blinked. "You're planning to return to Cardassia tomorrow?"

Anon stared at her. "Perhaps a little unrealistic, you're right."

"Hm, just a little," Janice smiled. "I'll be surprised if we get through half of this in a week."

"I'll second that," Kira snorted. A confirmed cynic herself when it came to history-making agreements of intra-galactical proportions reached within the first fifteen or twenty minutes.

"And in the meantime," Janice smiled at Anon from under her glittering halo of hair, "all I'm saying is the Federation is _our_ best avenue to find a person with Odo's credentials. Someone not only with the ability for neutral arbitration, but with the plain and simple ability to understand law and how to have it work for you."

"She has a point," Dax nodded in the stands.

"She is excellent," Worf assured.

"She's all right," Dax agreed. Once getting beyond Lange's general inexperience, evident in her unorthodox and casual approach even Curzon would probably be moderately impressed.

"An approach which is refreshing," Worf felt.

"It can be," Dax said. "Actually, you know who she reminds me of somewhat?"

"Lwaxana Troi." Odo grunted. Betazed's dauntless Ambassador to the Federation. An unorthodox, frank and honest woman who just also happened to be one of the most respected Federation arbitrators this century.

"Arbitrator," Worf stared at Dax.

"Lwaxana Troi," Dax stared back at him.

"We are not a liberty to make suggestions beyond security," Worf sighed.

"Do you think that includes talking loud enough for Benjamin to overhear?" she grimaced.

"Or at least Mister Damar," Odo agreed.

"Which he did overhear." Damar assured from where he sat to Odo's right. "The request is out of the question. The woman is a telepath — and that would be _Legate _Damar, Constable. Keep it in mind. Along with the fact that I, and I alone have the power to abort the conference at my choosing if I suspect contamination at any time -- which I do suspect."

"Care to share it with me?" Odo invited.

"All in due time," Damar promised. "All in due time."

"Yes, well, probably no reason to create hasty accusations at that," Odo said.

It took his Eminence a moment, but he eventually got it. "Create?" Damar glared.

"If the shoe fits," Odo nodded. Meanwhile Commander Dax got her wish when Sisko interjected Ambassador Troi's name over Lange elaborating on her description of what would constitute the ideal person to oversee a review of Bajor's legal and moral standing in the universe.

"That's my Benjamin," Dax cheered quietly and happily when Sisko hit upon the idea of Ambassador Troi without coercion.

It didn't matter to Damar how Sisko happened to come up with Troi. He was back up on his feet and shouting for the benefit of Dukat. "Out of the question. Ambassador Troi is a telepath."

"Yes, so?" Anon's indifference trained itself on his brother.

"It could be perceived as granting the Federation an unfair advantage," Pfrann explained.

"Over whom?" Anon scoffed. "Us? I don't think so. Try it, you'll see," he tempted Janice. "Have your Federation telepath attempt to read me. What she will hear and what she will see is silence. My thoughts are mine alone."

"Are you so sure about that?" Janice teasingly draped herself across the table.

"Excellent," Worf approved again of Lange's subtle and highly effective way of getting her message across.

"Subtle?" Dax looked at Lange who, at the moment, looked about as subtle as Dukat looked draped across the table from his end. The two of them meeting just about in the middle. Much to Kira's annoyance, Captain Sisko's surprise, and the Chief's utter delight; Dukat's apparent opinion.

"We'll find out, won't we?" he laughed, amused by Lange's spontaneous demonstration of her ability to be as cocky as anyone else. Who rose from the rank and file of Federation diplomats to fill the roll of arbitrator was clearly not important to him. Ambassadors Troi, Sarek or Curzon. The choice or recommendation was Captain Sisko's.

"Ambassadors Sarek and Curzon are both dead," Damar fumed. "Dukat!"

"Ignore him," Anon advised Janice as he sat back and she was pulled back to her seat by Kira.

"What is the matter with you?" Kira insisted. "Sit down!"

"What?" Janice blinked.

"You want to know what a puppet is?" Anon was saying. "That's a puppet; Mister Damar. Not I, or Pfrann."

"Who said you and Pfrann were puppets?" Lange asked, evidently having skipped over that chapter as well. Not only the one on being wary of spiders and their webs despite her natural talent for soothing the savage in one's breast.

"No one," Anon shrugged, not about to admit it if a thousand had. Which ten times ten thousand probably had and were as they sat there. "I am just telling you."

The same as he believed there was no better time than now to inform her the next concession to be made would be hers. Bajor's. Not his or the Cardassian Union. A demand softened by the thoroughly believable smile on his face. Odo grunted. He was priceless, that was for sure. A shining jewel in his father's otherwise corroded crown. 

"In his dreams," O'Brien guffawed in confidence to Bashir and Garak regarding that smile four hours later when the committee took a break from working on the details of the proposal to eat lunch.

"Really…" Garak said to Bashir. The conference room not exactly warm with congeniality was not exactly bristling or cold either. "We understand. We do understand -- I believe Julian and I do, anyway," he smiled in encouragement to O'Brien's glowing grin as the Chief sat there proudly listing off Doctor Lange's accomplishments of the morning thus far.

"Well, yes, I believe Garak and I understand somewhat," Bashir drew up a chair, Garak quick and happy to join him.

"Worf," Sisko picked up his coffee without lifting his eyes from the padd.

"I see them," Worf agreed.

"To an extent," Bashir frowned at O'Brien. "Understand, I mean."

"She's not just good, she is damn good." O'Brien promised. "I mean _damn _good. _Wham!_ She starts out sounding like she's coming from nowhere and the next thing he knows, she's got him exactly where she wants him, and he's no idea of how he even got there -- am I right, or wrong?" he singled Worf out of the crowd.

"You are right." Worf assured, his confidence in Doctor Lange not having waned with no anticipation that it would. 

"You can say that again,"O'Brien pulled up a chair for Worf to have a seat.

"Dax." Sisko directed with another reach for his coffee and without needing to look up.

"I see them," Dax smiled.

"So do I," Odo assumed his place as next in line.

"Constable?" Sisko's question was quizzical as it warranted a brief glance up.

"Just in case you need someone else to rescue the rescuer and so forth," Odo offered.

"Understood." Sisko resumed calculating an estimated cost of the programs discussed even though it wasn't the natural order of things.

"How much does it cost?" Kira wandered up presently to wonder; a reasonably replicated example of the traditional Bajoran fare hasperat in hand. "Who says reasonable?" she dropped the briny roll of marinated herbs and roots back down on her plate with the first disgusted bite.

"Those who don't know any better," Odo supposed. "And a lot."

"This surprises you?" Kira snorted. A suitable counter to both observations.

"Does it?" Odo looked to Sisko for at least one of the answers.

"No," Sisko shook his head. "A fair question of Doctor Lange's all around."

"Who's going to pay for it," Odo assisted Kira.

"I know what she said," Kira assured. "I didn't say it wasn't a good question. Yes, it was a good question."

"And the answer is?" Odo looked to Sisko.

"The Federation." Sisko stood up with a smile, moving away to verify something against the station's data banks now that he had the chance.

"In a perfect world," Odo grunted before Kira lost her lunch, literally, catching her plate before it dropped to the floor.

"Where everyone forgives and forgets," Kira momentarily satisfied her hostility with a vicious bite of her hasperat. "I wouldn't count on it. There's more than a few Federation worlds that aren't too happy with the Supreme Assembly's decision to press for a new treaty. Dukat's not the only one who has a fan club, so does Gowron."

"True," Odo ogled the Captain who apparently had set his parameters to exclude those particular delegates completely.

"What is Benjamin doing?" Kira was by nature a suspicious woman.

"Yes, well," Odo replied. From the looks of the profiles flashing by on the screen, he had a feeling Sisko was further isolating the Federation delegates into two distinct groups. The ones who were slated for upcoming reappointment by their home worlds, and the ones who had a few years to go, and hence a few years for their home worlds to forget the delegate's support of the Cardassian proposal; if necessary. If by chance Damar's Consulate didn't turn out to be all it was carved out to be.

"Precisely," Sisko returned to his seat and his coffee with the same smile.

"What?" Kira looked from the Captain to the screen and back again. "That's cheating!"

"Not really," Sisko denied.

"Yes, it is," Kira sat down with a huff and a loud clatter of her plate. "You can't seriously be planning to lobby for the Federation's financial assistance already."

"Major?" Sisko suggested. "Relax."

"And are you sure that's legal?" Odo added.

"That, too," Sisko nodded.

"Relax," Kira snatched up her hasperat. "That's what you said the last time and now look where we are — what?" she insisted. "Am I sure what's legal?"

"That," Sisko indicated. Not her hasperat, the fact that she was sitting at the table. "With me." he said.

"All right, fine, I'll stand." Kira stood up. "No, it's all right, I'll stand."

"Thank you," Sisko nodded. After all they didn't want to panic the Umpire. Prompt Damar into screaming something like foul when they were on top at the bottom of the first inning, the bases loaded, not a strike in sight.

"He's already threatened," Odo reassured Kira all was not lost that they wouldn't panic the Umpire.

"Dukat he's not," Kira agreed sourly.

Odo deliberated about her comment.

"Dukat," Kira's teeth clamped down on her hasperat. "Damar's not Dukat. And neither's -- Neither's -- " her arm flailed in the general direction of.

"Dukat," Odo nodded.

"I don't like him," Kira confided to no one's surprise. "I_ really_ do not like him. I think I like him even less…"

"Than Dukat," Odo nodded. "It's possible."

"It's definite," Kira assured, even if she wasn't quite sure why. She eyed Pfrann presently engaged in combating his brother's stoic icy stance with an exhaustive and lurid hula in a desperate attempt to win whatever debate he was losing. A mildly interesting note to be filed somewhere. An image rather like one of Dukat straining to exert his will over Sisko. The frustrated snake clearly no match. 

"Appearances can be deceiving," Odo also agreed with that.

"In some other universe," Kira muttered. Where she was the Intendant and Dukat was an astrophysicist. An image, part of which, Odo couldn't begin to assimilate.

"Beg your pardon?" he said.

"Don't hold your breath, in other words," Quark waddled up with a nod and unauthorized refill of Kira's coffee that she didn't even have until he plunked a mug down on her tray. "Not that I mean anything personal," he assured Kira. "But would you like some parsley to go with that? Or will an away suit do -- not for you, for me. I can take gagh. I can even take kanar. There's just something about fifty Bajorans eating hasperat at the same time in the same room that makes me want to petition the Federation to change the Prime Directive to exclude an item or two from protection."

"Kimchee," Sisko did not look up from his own troubles.

"Come again?" Quark cocked a lobe. "Do I hear an offer to pay double plus hospital expenses?"

"Korean cabbage," Sisko grinned. "It's traditionally aged in clay pots buried in the ground for a year."

"Uh, huh," Quark said. "If it makes sense to you, it makes sense to me. So what's this I hear about Dukat wanting to erect a memorial to Ziyal in the middle of the capital city of Bajor with Shakaar's and the Federation's blessing? I don't need the details, those I can get anywhere. I just want to know if it's root beer, kanar or blood ale I should lay in a supply of this week, and which way to duck when the Disruptors start firing. Notice I said Disruptors, not phasers. Not that I mean to suggest that Martok's here for any reason other than his health -- just how do you say welcome to Quark's bar in Klingonese?"

"You don't," Sisko promised.

"If I live to see Friday, I hold you to that." Quark refilled his raktajino. "Marry Grilka is one thing, live with her is another. I've nothing against sex, blood, guts or mutilated body parts. No more than the next one. I just know there's more to life than death -- that'll be twenty strips. Not for the coffee. As a down payment for when you know who needs me to help sabotage the weapons array so you can retake the station one more time." he eyed Kira. "Did you ever wonder if what actually happened is Damar missed? Hitting Ziyal instead of you? I have. Call it wishful thinking, but I have." 

"Eh, heh," Kira said.

"Suit yourself," Quark shrugged. "Just remember, he who laughs last, laughs last. Whatever it means. Keep it in mind."

The Chief was close to laughing heartily, boasting like a proud parent. "He's the one who hasn't a _clue. _Every damn time he walks straight into it…In over _her_ head? He's the one in over his head, and paddling like hell to try and keep his head above water -- never happen," he promised Worf. "It'll never happen. True or false?"

"You are right," Worf agreed.

"Yes, I'm right," O'Brien snorted. "Knew it five minutes after I sat down and he knows it, too. Two days, I give it. Not even. Said as much already himself. By this time tomorrow if he hasn't throw the towel in, _we do know who will."_

"Damar." Bashir understood that much. "Are you quite sure you heard Dukat correctly? I suppose as long as he doesn't mind sleeping with his eyes open and his back to the wall watching the door for the next hundred or so years, yes, you must have."

"Either of which is fine with me," O'Brien pointed. "The sooner this nonsense is over with, the better. Because it is nonsense, yes, it is. All of it."

"Oh, yes," Garak breathed. "I may be forced to agree with you, Chief O'Brien… Especially if…" he regarded the Chief as well as Worf with awe, "you are accurate in your claim Gul Dukat acknowledged Cardassia's responsibility not only _for_ but _to_ the Bajoran-Cardassian war population."

"He did," O'Brien maintained.

"Yes," Worf agreed.

"_Really_…" Garak said to Commander Dax strolling up to lean down over Worf's shoulder. "How utterly astounding as Julian professes, and certainly quite daring."

"Foolish is what Julian is saying," Bashir corrected. "Utterly absurd is right. The man must be insane -- not completely unrealistic," he grinned for Dax. "Considering his genetic background. Mental illness does run in families. Cardassians are no exceptions."

"Actually what Dukat said was he recognized the Bajoran-Cardassian as a people. Kira is the one who asked if he was acknowledging responsibility. Not to dampen anyone's celebration." Dax smiled at O'Brien.

"You can't dampen anything," O'Brien insisted. "Say it the way you want to. It comes down to the same thing."

"Well, no…" Garak could see where there might be a difference. "Not necessarily. A subtle difference, I'll grant you…"

"Best known as the subtle art of diplomacy," Bashir clapped him on the shoulder. "Garak's right, Chief. Regardless of what you might think Dukat meant, he knows what he said. Rather the same as I find it somewhat difficult to believe he could be 'tricked' into anything he didn't wish to be; impossible to believe, actually. All he'd have to do, if the impossible happened, is say, no, I'm sorry, that's not the way it is; this is."

"Oh, yes," Garak agreed. "Yes, most definitely. Absurd to think otherwise."

"_Our_ people, all right?" O'Brien said. "Those were his exact words. Yes, they're _our _people. Yes, I recognize them and so does Mister Damar. You tell me how someone can misunderstand that."

"By stretching acknowledgment of someone's existence to include some form of political or financial remuneration," Bashir proposed. "You're talking apples and oranges…also reasonable," his smile flashed again for Dax, "considering your own inexperience…as well as Worf's. Personally, in this instance, I'd be far more inclined to respect Curzon's impression."

"Well…" Dax smiled, considering the way it was put, she wasn't so sure he would.

"Well, what do you call the damn Consulate if it's not remuneration?" O'Brien snapped. "He also said that. Quote! 'It makes no sense to propose a Consulate for a people we don't recognize, therefore we must.' End quote!"

"On the other hand…" Garak ogled Dax.

"Close enough," Dax shrugged.

"If the offer is sincere," Garak agreed. "Yes, quite possibly."

"Which you're insisting it isn't," Bashir reminded O'Brien "So it's not remuneration, merely a strikingly obvious scheme of some sort as suspected."

"You know there's one in every crowd," O'Brien nodded to Worf.

"Make that two," Dax apologized to the both of them. "Not to tell either of you your jobs, but I really don't believe the two of you are supposed to be discussing any of this?"

"With the hired help," Bashir teased. "Explains your 'No, actually what Dukat said was'. But quite all right. I agree. You really shouldn't be. But only because…" he accepted a refill of his root beer from Quark, toasting the Chief with a wink, "it's extraordinarily boring. As I said, predictable. For heaven's sake, it's painfully clear to me Dukat is gambling on Ziyal to glean Janice's sympathies -- and succeeding. Which puts him steps_ ahead_ of Janice, as well as you." 

"An interesting theory, Julian, yes, I must say." Garak continued to jump sides.

"Make that three," O'Brien nodded to Worf. "Four. You can include Kira in there, too. Did you see _her?_ The way she grabbed her? What did she think they were going to do? _Kiss_ each other?"

"I beg your pardon?" Bashir almost spit up his root beer.

"No!" O'Brien said. "Get a grip." 

"How some people exaggerate." Quark shook his head in agreed disgust.

"True." Dax handed Bashir a napkin.

Which it wasn't true. No. Garak knew that. What it was, was a window of opportunity lost. A chance to take their blinders off and see a son talking with a woman he knew, rather than a father ogling, enticing and plotting the conquest of fresh game. A significant difference. A significant point that would cause the immediate halt to the proceedings. The ones that Garak could see little more than Captain Sisko and Doctor Lange taking seriously. Unfortunately as Doctor Lange was clearly as guilty as Gul Dukat of at least the indiscretion of personally knowing someone she wasn't supposed to know. Where Captain Sisko was just so focused on the task of having the meetings come off smoothly regardless of Legate Damar's true intentions. Leaving ample time and sufficient opportunity for all the others to blindly continue along their merry way.

__

Oh, the games that people play, as the Humans say. Garak's thoughts strayed to watching Anon watching Janice paying extraordinary close attention to a large bowl of fresh fruits on the buffet table. Games that had Julian, the Chief, Major Kira naturally, Commander Worf, and even Commander Dax rallying to pit their wits and their wills against a man they just all knew too well. All while forgetting that the manpresent was a man they didn't know at all.

__

Not in the least. Garak's patronizing smile shifted from the delectable variety of foods to the equally blind watchful and silent figure of Constable Odo presiding over his troops presiding over the room to the point of overcrowding. Captain Sisko was taking no chances whatsoever. A veritable army of Federation and Bajoran Special Forces surrounded the conference room both inside and out. The deadly powerful authority of their figures and stern unemotional faces, now relaxed and casual. Confident. But then there was something almost strangely comforting in the common knowledge that of course Gul Dukat was guilty of whatever anyone suspected, thought or anticipated. So why worry about anything other than the obvious of beating him at his own game? 

__

Oh, for goodness sake, Garak, will you stop sitting there observing and say something? Ziyal groaned. Trapped between their world and hers and unable to communicate with any of them, she would grab Garak by his collar and shake him if she could in the hopes that it just might do some good. She gave it a try anyway and her hands passed right through him as if he was the one who wasn't really there.

__

"Ah! Now, I could have told you that!" Smug, amused and satisfied, Dukat taunted her from the background.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Ziyal turned around to her father and his smirk with its entrenched glint glittering wet in his hard glassy eyes. He looked larger in some ways; smaller in others, attired in the Federation's regulation orange jumpsuit reserved for her prisoners rather than his brilliant black and silver Cardassian uniform.

He looked older. For a man who was still reasonably shy of middle age by Cardassian standards, _the _Gul Dukat self-appointed and acclaimed scourge of the galaxy, had aged ten years in the last eight months. Ziyal studied the fierce and tightly woven muscles of his bare arms exposed by the short sleeves of the jumpsuit; the long, thick fingers of his large hands planted firmly on his hips. She always thought about those arms and hands as strong before. Now they looked little more than like the rubbery withered limbs of Janice's mummy. The strong fleshy coloration of his chameleon skin faded into an unhealthy and sallow green under the room's light. Ziyal sighed, wondering and hoping her interpretation of the Prophets' task before her was right as Dukat's neck coiled forward with his infamous mocking leer. Loving her father deeply, almost madly, it would be a lie to say she hadn't upon occasion over the last three years entertained the thought of wiping that smile off his face with a blast from a phaser. How or why her father managed to incur that same leniency from her mother and Nerys escaped her even though she knew and understood their own deep and maddened feelings.

__

"Observation," Dukat jeered, _"is what your tailor does best."_

Wrong. It was Mister Damar who had killed her. Her father the one helpless to stop him, not Garak. An unfortunate event the Federation's crew of liberal psychiatrists and psychologists preferred to refer to it as. One that brought her father dangerously close to the diagnosis of a beaten man.

You'd never know that though by the fight he continued to fight with her rather than fighting to figure out a way out from under the Federation's noose tightening around his neck. The Supreme Assembly wasn't as inclined as their Council of Physicians to view Cardassia's former Emperor as a bitterly wronged and misunderstood victim of circumstance, thereby letting him off the hook with little more than a slap on the wrist one more time.

"Wrong,"Ziyal nodded, as cruelly stubborn and impatient in her utter disregard of her father and his feelings as her brother Anon. "Anon did want to kiss her. He does want to kiss her. He WILL kiss her. Garak knows that. Kira doesn't, but yes, Garak does. Not Dax or Odo or even Quark -- yet, anyway," she acknowledged. "Quark will figure it out, but by that time it could be too late…like Captain Sisko." she regarded the Captain sadly. Sitting by himself, his attention buried in the padd. "He's just so preoccupied with everything. The station, the conference. He and Janice really are the only ones taking any of this seriously. If the rest of them aren't angry like Nerys, plotting like Damar…or in love." A smile flitted briefly across Ziyal's face, thinking of her brother who stopped thinking about anything even remotely connected to establishing an Intelligence Network on her home world the moment he spotted Janice sitting in the middle of Quark's. "They are all just treating it like a joke. It's not their fault. Anon is a victim of his parentage.

"That's you, father," she charged Dukat. "Not them. Your fault, not theirs. They can't see Anon for you. They do just know you too well."

"I've tried!" Dukat beamed, pleased to hear it hadn't all been in vain.

"Be serious!" Ziyal insisted. "Anon's not just being 'Dukat'. He _knows _her. She _knows_ him. Regardless of how or why, those two people _know _each other. That's why they're talking to one another. Their relationship doesn't spell scandal, it spells danger. _You _know that."

__

"On the contrary!" What Dukat _knew_ and was even happier to report was that he was light years _away_ from Terok Nor, comfortable in his Federation prison cell and merely having another one of his delusional fits.

"Only because you like having delusional fits," Ziyal assured. "You're not crazy, father, I'm half Bajoran. It's more than just the ridges on the bridge of my nose. There are different planes of existence -- Obviously." She tried a leer out on him.

__

"Kiss her?" Dukat reacted with a jolt as that much suddenly penetrated like a Klingon dagger.

"Father," Ziyal sighed again, "the memoirs of your military exploits read like a plot for Quark's sexual holosuites. Nerys is right. I don't know how you had the time to fight a war. Any war."

"We are not talking about _me,"_ Dukat interrupted harshly. "We are discussing your brother. _Regardless _of whether or not _I_ _wrote _the book!"

"Of carnal knowledge and delights," Ziyal nodded. "You didn't write the book."

"Merely elaborated on it," Dukat's illuminating leer lit up again, looming its way towards her.

"All right, fine," Ziyal surrendered. "You were talking."

"Thank you. And, regardless of who wrote the book!" The idea her brother might use his mouth other than to spray the room with glib, sarcastic Cardassian charm disturbed and distressed him. "With warrant!" he snapped having once or twice upon a time inadvertently found himself in a similar situation she might recall. "Anon is a victim of sabotage."

"Maybe you are crazy," Ziyal acknowledged what the galaxy already knew.

"Kiss _whom?" _Dukat roared. An unwilling participant in his own hallucination he could at least expect to be given a straight answer.

"Janice," Ziyal shrugged.

"Janice." Dukat searched the occupants of the conference room in time to spot some Orion snake charmer about to wrap her tentacles around his unsuspecting son.

"She's Human," Ziyal answered his gasp.

"I can see that!" Dukat turned back to her with a snarl.

"Oh," Ziyal said. "Well, most people think she's Klingon."

Klingon. Dukat stared at his daughter blind apparently as well as dead.

"Her hair?" Ziyal offered.

"_Hair?"_ Dukat sputtered.

"Nothing," Ziyal shook her head. "It figures you wouldn't notice something everyone else does."

"On the contrary," he said, "I noticed. What is she doing to my son?"

"Doing?" Ziyal frowned across the room to Janice diligently attempting to ignore Anon taking an inordinate amount of time deciding what he wanted to eat. "Nothing," she giggled. "Anon's the one talking to the fruit salad. Quark's right. He really is hopelessly inept at seduction. I think that's one of the reasons why Janice likes him so much because so is she. They don't feel threatened by one another. They really are kind of cute together."

"It's wrong!" Dukat begged interrupting.

"Wrong," Ziyal looked at him. "Since when do you know anything about what's wrong?"

"It's wrong," Dukat promised.

She still just looked at him. Finally he sighed. "Fine. _Not right._ And those are not my standards, those are the galaxy's. As everyone is always telling me."

The testimony fell on deaf ears. "I didn't bring you here to pass judgment," she reminded coldly. "You're supposed to be learning how to appreciate your value, never mind what anyone else says or thinks. Why do you think you are here? If you were here -- _really here_ instead of languishing in some Federation holding cell, none of this would even be going on. Damar's only using Anon."

"Ziyal…" Dukat rolled his eyes with a groan. "If he's my son, he knows that -- as if he weren't, Damar wouldn't waste his time."

"In the meantime who could get killed this time is your daughter Janice!"

"Oh, well!" Dukat laughed, his chuckle mocking. "My dear, Ziyal, astounding as it might seem, for every one Janice Lange there are a thousand more. I repeat, your brother isn't inept, merely young."

"Married!" Ziyal stepped close, almost on his toes, her face in his face. "Anon is married, father. Janice is his wife. Or she will be. If she and Anon live. Mister Damar isn't the only threat, and Janice isn't the only one who could die. So could Anon!"

"Die?" Dukat's head whipped away from her not to stare at Anon but at Kira standing on the sidelines and doing nothing as usual.

"Nerys doesn't know anything about it, father," Janice shook her head. "You can't blame her every time something goes wrong. That's something else you have to learn."

"On the contrary!" Dukat corrected and Ziyal groaned. "Major Kira _prides_ herself on being derelict in her responsibilities."

"Nerys' responsibilities to me did not include holding my hand and wiping my chin after I ate," Ziyal argued. "I was an adult, father. The decisions I made and opinions I had were my own."

"You were my daughter," Dukat cried back in frustrated agony. "It was Nerys' idea to bring you to Terok Nor. Your _grave, _Ziyal. Hardly a sanctuary!" 

"Well, maybe, yes! If Nerys had a little more assistance from you other than attacking the Federation, and a little more constructive feedback other than an argument or some stupid insulting leer whenever she tried to talk with you, things may have turned out differently, or maybe not. I'm not sad to be dead, father. I've never felt so happy with finally understanding my own value than I ever did when I was alive. Being with the Prophets is like having the most wonderful moment I ever shared with you, Nerys, or Garak. One that in this world never ends. I will take my place beside the Prophets, father. I am going to do that. Do you know why? Because it is my right. Captain Sisko's dream of utopia come true and Kira's also, truly in her heart."

"Anon is my son!" Dukat insisted, his whine ending in whisper just so pained. "I can't, Ziyal! I just can't."

"Listen to me!" Ziyal grabbed him before he did succumb into the sheltering arms of insanity, her greatest fear. "The only thing you can't do is change, father. Everyone understands and accepts that. All I'm asking you is to extend that same understanding and acceptance back…to Nerys…" her attention drifted to Kira standing and talking with Constable Odo. "If you can't give it to anyone else."

"_Nerys?"_ her father's demanding growl brought her back.

Ziyal shrugged. "Well, to yourself also, of course. We've already covered that part. Nerys has earned that much respect from you."

"For killing my daughter?" Dukat stared at her aghast. "And now my son? Who is insane?"

"You are, father," she assured, "if you truly believe Nerys can be everywhere and know everything all at the same time. Here today, now, her duty is to Janice, not Anon. If you were here then maybe yes, again, things might be different. But you're not, are you? And Nerys can't be everywhere and know everything anymore than Captain Sisko can be expected to hold off an army of Maquis all by himself."

"Maquis?" Dukat shook his pounding and aching head. "The Maquis are destroyed, Ziyal. As dead as you."

"Stick around, father," Ziyal invited him. "Those games people play don't always end in tears of laughter. Half of the people you see in this room will be dead by 2110. That child of yours you see clinging to life in Garak's arms isn't me, it's Anon."

Dukat pushed himself free of her, wrenched loose, to head straight for Kira with a resounding roar for her attention.

"She can't hear or see you, father," Ziyal hung her head. "Anymore than she can hear or see me…I think." she looked up suddenly with a concerned blink of her watery eyes. One really never knew with Nerys. Apart from being Bajoran, not a diluted half, in her own way Kira was as ardent and passionate in her relationship with Dukat as he was ardent and passionate in his relationship with her.

"In your own way," Ziyal grimaced. Her father dramatic in his recoiling from the blistering stench of Kira's hasperat with the utterly pertinent notification: "Major, right now I wouldn't kiss you if you were the last woman left alive in the galaxy!"

"What about for all the latinum?" Ziyal joined him to ask, not that her question was anymore relative than his. 

Dukat could have ignored her the way Kira was ignoring him but it wouldn't have been nearly as much fun. "A potentially different story," he oozed in an effort to irk her high moral principles.

It worked. "Do you lie awake at night trying to be figure out how to be as disgusting as you can be?" she retorted.

"Yes!" Dukat assured. Not that any of this _was_ relative to saving his son's life to turn it over to the arms of some life-sucking M-113 salt creature posing as a Human doctor of anthropology and forensic science. "Or has that _changed?" _he batted his eyes. "_Not_ your sister's long list of credentials, but the potential for pain and agony and _death_ Anon is destined to endure before the station's chronometer reads _2110?"_

Ziyal shrugged. "In a universe of infinite possibilities…"

"There are always _two_ realities guaranteed," Dukat agreed. "One, no doubt in which my son dies, and the other in which he does not. Clever!" 

"You have to admit the dramatic always gets your attention," Ziyal smiled.

"So it does," Dukat eyed Kira not exactly lustfully. "As far as any other _reality _that would take a rift of infinite proportions in the Space-Time continuum to change — Major!" he barked in Kira's face and went unnoticed. He barked again. The second desperate command for her attention equally unnoticed or ignored.

"Father…" Ziyal caught Dukat's hand insistently swiping at the plate in Kira's hand in a vain effort to knock it away. "She really can't see or hear you. Not because she doesn't want to, but because she can't. You're not here."

"Then what do I have to lose?" Dukat challenged, daring to unleash Kira's immortal wrath with a scream for_ "NERYS!"_ at the top of his lungs.

"What?!" Kira's head snapped up from day-dreaming over her lunch with her familiar and becoming snarl Dukat had grown to love and cherish over the last ten years.

"Ah!" he triumphantly inhaled deeply the delightfully sour aroma of her breath searing the flesh of his cheeks, the feeling as pleasurable as a phaser burn. It was one of those _special _moments however doomed to be remarkably short lived. Kira's aggravated response was not in answer to him. It was for Odo mumbling something about you know who approaching you know where. The Constable's notice likewise expressed for Kira's sole benefit being as he was also unable to see or hear the former Emperor of Cardassia gracing them with his divine presence.

"I see him," Kira assured, meaning the clearly visible figure of Anon slipping across the floor to sidle up to the unsuspecting Doctor Lange trailing the ends of her voluminous cloud of hair through the yamok sauce and assorted other condiments. 

"Okay, maybe Nerys does pay a little attention to Anon," Ziyal admitted as Kira's plate of hasperat slammed through her father's chest to come to rest in Constable Odo's obliging outstretched hand.

"Not enough!" Dukat stared down in disbelief on Kira effortlessly following the path of her plate through one side of him to reappear on the other and take off on a fast trot for his son.

"To prevent Anon from being killed, or getting married?" Ziyal laughed at her father's priceless expression.

"Both!" Dukat collected himself with a snap. "We are not Klingons. We do not have to _prove _our superiority by dying in combat or _for _conquest. We_ are_ superior. Anon is obviously confused."

"Something to do with what anger excites, restraint heightens," Ziyal nodded. "Remind me to remind Kira…unless you're going to stand here and try to tell me you've restrained yourself in any other way with anyone else," she blinked innocently to Dukat's flickering frown. "I really think it's only fair I warn her. Don't you?"

Dukat had no idea. Less even what she might think she was talking about.

"You," Ziyal promised. "After all, remember in a universe of infinite possibilities there are always two distinct and different realities guaranteed. One where you do, the other where you don't."

"Do and don't what?" Dukat insisted.

"We'll have to see," Ziyal tucked her arm through his, the tip of her nose wrinkled in wicked delight. "In the meantime, what was the name of that asteroid where the Dominion held General Martok and Doctor Bashir captive -- I mean, you do understand why Doctor Bashir, don't you?" she verified.

"Who?" Dukat said.

Ziyal nodded satisfied. "He's a doctor, father. He could have identified Dukat as a Changeling, so naturally they had to replace him aboard the station with a Changeling as well…"

"What?" Dukat said.

"The same reason the Changeling had to reject both Kira and I," Ziyal nodded. "Because knowing you as well as we do we would have suspected something to be wrong about Dukat, too."

"What?" Dukat said.

"Think, father," she encouraged. "That's your trouble, you're just not thinking. Don't you remember the asteroid -- don't you remember be captured and brought to the asteroid as a prisoner of the Dominion en route to the station to escort Captain Sisko and his staff to the Klingon home world to expose Chancellor Gowron as a Dominion plant?"

"_What_?" Dukat said, that time incredulously.

Ziyal smiled. "Well, I don't know who can go before the Federation Supreme Assembly with such an outrageous story, father, if you can't; which, of course you can. You're just too overwrought by the death of your daughter just yet to be thinking clearly -- but then, father," she said, "I'm sure whatever you expected to find when the Dominion finally released you in an effort to cover Mister Damar's betrayal of the Union, and instead have everyone blaming you, was me dead. Silenced by Mister Damar because by that time, I knew, father, of course I knew. However angry I was, however confused, I knew something was terribly wrong about your decision to align Cardassia with the Dominion; the Union is independent, father, as it is supreme. Under the Dominion it would be neither, and you just would never embrace such an idea; you wouldn't. And if Kira thought hard enough, she'd know that as well. You're just frightened, father. Frightened of Mister Damar being in the position to kill your sons as well."

"In his dreams!" Dukat snapped.

"And yours, father," Ziyal laughed, "if you think the UFP will ever believe you; but that's not the point, is it? What they believe, and what they will have to accept are two different things…" she pressed a message cylinder into his hand. "And not because of the discovery of some lost transmission from I to you, or you to me…"

Dukat glanced from the cylinder to her; Ziyal smiled. "I also like that idea of a rift in the Space-Time continuum. I'm not sure Kira would be able to talk you out of aligning with the Dominion even if she did have a chance, but I know she'd want to despite the dangers to the Time line. Other than that…what do _you_ think of the name George? I like it. Even though I do understand Attila is Human for some sort of conquering tyrant like the Klingon Kahless, I agree with Anon. It does sound more like something you would name a girl."

Maybe in some other universe but not in this one if Kira had anything to say about it or any aspirations of one Gul Anon Dukat busy salting his Kaferian apples with fried Ferengi tube grubs.

"Did you get my message?" Anon asked Janice.

"What message is that?" Janice giggled down on the mess he was making on his plate. "Anon, what are you doing? You couldn't pay a Ferengi to eat that."

He didn't care about any Ferengi. "The rose."

"What rose?" Janice moved down the long line of tantalizing delights in a ploy to deflect any potential suspicion. "The one from Quark?"

"No, it's not from Quark." Anon followed her step for step, fending off an inflamed platter of Klingon serpent worms startled to find their faces wet with a sticky rain of Cardassian yamok sauce as Janice swept by. "It's from me. It means…Let me see…" he stopped to recall what Pfrann had said. "'Thinking of you.' Yes, that's it. I am thinking of you."

"You are?" Janice turned around, her eyes misting over at the sentiment, her cheeks flushed slightly pink. "Is that why you're spraying purple-green goop all over everything?"

"Yamok sauce, not goop," Anon laughed. "And I'm not spraying, you are."

"I am?" Janice said. "Oh, I am." She groaned at the long trail of…? 

"Yamok sauce," Anon nodded.

Staining the table, her tunic, her hair and just about everything including him.

"Oh, boy," Rom sprang to helpful attention with a snatch for a towel.

"No, it's all right," Anon shrugged away from the Ferengi gnat patting at his arm. "It's all right." He set aside his plate to find something Janice could use to wipe her hair clean before the color was permanently set. 

"Um…maybe this?" Rom held out his towel.

"Yes, thank you." Anon took it.

"And, um…" Rom looked around, sloshing some cold water into a glass. "Maybe this?"

"That'll work," Anon agreed.

"Yup, that it should," Rom nodded. "That it should. If not, maybe…um…" he frowned around again coming to rest on Leeta glaring at him. "What would you use to remove yamok sauce from your hair?"

"Yamok sauce," Leeta's hands were on her hips.

"Yup," Rom nodded. "Yamok sauce. She…I mean, he," he said being as Anon was the one with the towel and the water. "He didn't do it. He's just, you know, the one helping her wash her hair."

"Wash her hair," Leeta banefully eyed Anon sponging away at Janice.

"Yup," Rom nodded. "Kind of looks that way, doesn't it?"

Leeta slammed him out of the way. 

"I could do something like lick my lips and say it's delicious," Anon proposed slyly as he wet the sticky ends of Janice's hair with the towel. "But maybe I shouldn't. It sounds too much like my father."

"What would you say instead?" Janice bit her lip.

"Oh…let me think…" he tipped his head back for a moment before their eyes met again. Only this time it was the wrong set of pupils. Brown, not green, and burning back at him like two quantum torpedoes fixed on a target.

"What do you want?" Anon's stare hardened suspiciously at the unexpected appearance of the Bajoran siren Leeta. An even better question might be: "Where did you come from?" 

Leeta laughed. A deep, vibrant throaty and deadly chuckle before she grabbed him by his collarless tunic. "Yamok sauce? Oh, please! Spill a glass of kanar over her shoulder, why don't you?"

She was crazy. If his father was crazy, this one was equally insane. "Her hair…" Anon started to say.

"I see her hair," Leeta assured. "Touch it and there won't be enough left of you to send home in a matter stream. Rom will make sure of that."

"Rom…" Anon said, his look coming to rest on the little Ferengi with the towel and the water.

"Yup," Rom kind of wave. "That's me."

"I'll remember that," Anon promised, and he would.

"Good!" Leeta said.

"And will likewise mention it to my father when I see him." he notified Kira jumping into action with a barking order for Leeta to turn him loose. "After I remind him who is my mother and who is not. What I have to tolerate, I do not necessarily like — or need." his contemptuous hypnotic stare bore into Kira prying Leeta's hands off of him. "That includes your protection. Now take your hands off of me like you told the other one to before I break them."

"He didn't mean that," Janice anxiously implored when Anon strode away leaving behind a flustered Kira. "I can't believe Anon meant it," she blinked sadly after him, dismayed by the cold, uninhibited threat of violence uttered by her mate against the appointed guardian of his own sister; that really didn't make any sense. "His father must have honored you enormously to entrust the care of his daughter to you. Anon has to know that. Understand it. Realize it…" she whispered, realizing something herself. "He's hurt. Oh, Kira," she reached for Kira's arm in a natural and instinctive effort to help her understand. "He's not angry, he's hurt. Angry because he is hurt. Why, I think he thinks…I think he thinks…" she whispered again, feeling the intensity of Kira's bristling energy. It was powerful and potent. Not thinking she dropped Kira's arm, grasping for her ear to see if she could read her life force like Anar tried to teach her. She couldn't. All she could feel was an ear with the same bristling energy she could feel in Kira's arm and see on her face.

"Sorry," she released Kira with an apologetic wince. "Sometimes I get carried away. It's not intentional…anymore than Anon," she was unable to resist mentioning again despite the danger.

Kira wasn't listening. "Yes, he meant it! Of course, he meant it! What do you mean, he didn't mean it?" she demanded confused by more than what Anon may have meant or didn't mean. She was embarrassed. _Why_ she was embarrassed, or felt embarrassed, she had no idea. "What do I care what he meant or didn't mean? He meant it! Why?"

"Oh," Janice bit her lip that time in thought not breathless excitement. "Well, I'm not sure. Probably because I would prefer to think he didn't mean it?"

That clarified things a lot, not. "What?" Kira said.

"Because I like you?" Janice smiled. "I can't imagine anyone not liking you?"

"Well, I like you, too; I don't understand you." No, Kira couldn't begin to pretend she understood her. She frowned feeling the lingering pressure of the fingers that had squeezed her ear. "But I like you. Yes," she said. "I do."

"Good," Janice tucked her arm through hers. "Everyone likes to be liked."

Cardassians were no exception.

Dukat scowled at Ziyal grimacing at his side. "Everyone _likes_ to be _liked?"_

"Something like that," she admitted.

"Everyone likes to be liked." Dukat rocked on his heels thinking about the profound philosophy before erupting with a sputter. "What, in the name of your Prophets, is_ that _supposed to mean? The woman has the sense of a Dabo hostess. I don't care how many _doctorates_ or _degrees _she _claims_ to have hidden under that! That!"

"Hair?" Ziyal replied. "I thought you said you didn't notice it?"

"I didn't." Dukat assured. "The child is half my age, why would I?"

"Because you would," Ziyal nodded. "But that's all right. If you miss Anon's point, I'm sure Nerys will make hers emphatically clear."

"What _point_?" Dukat snapped.

"Touch her and there won't be enough left of you to send home in a matter stream?" Ziyal gazed back at him misleading innocent and wide-eyed.

"Oh, really." Dukat looked over the so-named helpless waif Janice Lange, innocent in her shapeless beige tunic and flagrant in her spinning web of deception designed to coerce and confuse Nerys above and beyond his son. "Anyone with _eyes_ can see the creature is attractive. The same as anyone with a _brain _would interpret any attention from me as a compliment to my son. That includes your brother and Major Kira. But, fine. Have it your way."

"Now you sound like Chief O'Brien," Ziyal scoffed.

He heard her wrong. "_Chief_ O'Brien?" Her comparison escaped him; thoroughly. "Ziyal," he groaned. "How do I even remotely sound like _Chief_ O'Brien?"

"You'll see." Ziyal promised and Dukat's eyes rolled one more time to the Heavens above and beyond Terok Nor where he longed to be.

"You know actually it's Pfrann's fault Nerys ended up pregnant with Chief and Mrs. O'Brien's son last year," Ziyal also felt now was as good a time as any to disclose. "It wasn't an asteroid belt, it was the True Way practicing maneuvers in the Gamma Quadrant. And Kira's shuttle…well," she shrugged. "I guess you could say it kind of just got in the way."

__

Definitely heard her wrong. Dukat picked his gaping jaw back up from the floor. "Do you remember that?" Ziyal smiled.

"An emphatic no!"

"Work on it," she encouraged with a point for that message cylinder he held in his hand. "Honestly, father, where there's a will, there's a way out of every situation. Haven't you ever heard _that _before_? _I shouldn't have to do all of your thinking for you. You really are capable of taking on some of the responsibility of beating the Federation's Supreme Assembly at their game. Unless, of course, you really do want to spend the rest of your life in some Federation rehabilitation colony?"

"It isn't _some_ rehabilitation colony!"

"No," Ziyal agreed. "It's _the_ Federation rehabilitation colony on Elba II for the criminally insane. Sixteen consecutive life sentences if the Supreme Assembly gets their way. If you're lucky you'll see Cardassia again in two thousand years. How awful. Especially when even _bad _attention is better than _no attention_ at all. Something else you know and I really shouldn't have to be telling you, yet for some reason I find I am."

"And if I agree?" Dukat sighed wearily. "Will you go away?"

"Not on your life!" Ziyal laughed. "I come by that very same stubbornness that Anon has. _Naturally. _And need I say, dear father, whose fault is that?" 

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

"Party's getting a little rough." Odo presented Sisko with his official summary of the first minor altercation of the day that saw the tussle between Anon and Leeta quickly put down by Major Kira. Further investigation, if the Captain felt it warranted, would likely reveal Anon was ruffled though unharmed. As it would also likely reveal some equally minor role played by Doctor Lange, Rom, a towel, a glass of water, and a reasonably sized white bowl of yamok sauce.

"Hair," Odo nodded to his attending deputy Morn securing the necessary strand of evidence from the aforementioned bowl. Brown flecked with gold and a meter or so in length, Odo didn't need to order a forensic scan analysis to determine its owner.

Beyond that the confrontation had the usual up on their feet and as quickly urged to sit back down by those who were supposed to take control, taking control of the situation already under control before the last of security present set aside their boredom to pick up their rifles and point them wherever, at whomever, they needed to point them. In general, that would be no one and no where. Unless one wanted to count Damar, arguably the loudest complainer. O'Brien was arguably the second. Major Kira briefly given to stamping her feet probably had her reasons.

"So it would seem, Constable. Time to get back to work." Sisko agreed with the assessment, closing his eyes to Damar's thunderous shout from the Cardassian corner of the conference room. Unfortunately the Captain was stymied from making a clean getaway.

"Party's getting a little rough, isn't it, Sisko?" Damar crossed the room in great strides, the knuckles of both his hands slamming down on the table. "Time to get back to doing a little work."

"Yes, well, that's probably also a first," Odo grunted for Sisko's information. It wasn't every day the Federation and Cardassian government forces found themselves in such mutual agreement, harmony and accord in any matter. Let alone matters of security and battle.

"So it is," Sisko also agreed with that. Damar he just looked at rather tiredly than interrupt.

"And then what?" Damar demanded. "Dinner at Quark's for another round of good times, good cheer -- " 

"Good nights," Odo agreed. "2300 sounds about right. Early to bed, early to rise. That sort of thing."

"Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." Sisko was familiar with the adage; he ought to be, it was Human. "I'll be well satisfied with healthy, Constable, thank you."

"Don't mention it."

Damar chose to ignore the advice. "I have a better idea. We prefer to take our meals in our quarters from now on."

"Out of the question." Sisko was firm in his decision to keep the group a group, not only the altercations, minor or otherwise where he could see them. "Push me, Legate, and we'll all be bunking together." 

"Told you not to mention it," Odo gave Damar a nod.

"On the contrary, Constable," Damar countered, "I was just about to take you up on your invitation."

He had a change of heart apparently as he walked away leaving Odo to explain to Sisko's searching look just what constituted Damar's invitation.

"He's suggested he has information that would require an immediate halt to the proceedings," Odo complied.

"They're his proceedings, Constable," Sisko said. "He may end them any time he so chooses. He hardly needs our approval or blessing."

"I tried that approach," Odo agreed. "It didn't work. So your guess is as good as mine. Bluff or no bluff. If no bluff, I wouldn't necessarily discount it as no threat." It was his turn to give Sisko a searching look.

The Captain wasn't by nature a man of rash decisions even it meant taking a few necessary moments to reconsider his own. "Baring the obvious risks, Constable," Sisko slowly shook his head, "I would prefer not to find Dukat's body in a Jefferies tube, if that is going to be at all possible. Their quarters are two doors away from each other. We can move them to two corridors; we can play musical chairs. The question is a matter of opportunity, and I would prefer to keep chance for such opportunity to the barest minimum."

"Not that it can't happen between the hours of 2300 and zero-seven," Odo said. "And not that the body can't be Damar's. With a line of suspects stretching from the security office to the gates of the worm hole. Through the ranks of Cardassians, Klingons, Bajorans, Federation and civilians alike. Understood. Don't push you or we will find ourselves bunking down together."

"So we will," Sisko promised, truthfully of a mind to issue the order now as he had been last evening. Little did he know what little difference it would have made if he had other than throwing a monkey wrench into the evening plans of Gul Dukat and Doctor Lange.

Elsewhere and concurrently Bashir was taking up his position as first to wave the white flag of surrender, a breath or two ahead of O'Brien's complaints.

"All right! All right!" Bashir was not about to argue the virtues of sitting, standing, or cowering with anyone. "I'm a doctor!" And aside from the Bajoran was three times the size of him, "I know exactly," he gingerly moved the phaser rifle out of sight of his left nostril, "just how much damage that can do."

"Oh, yes," Garak exhaled deeply, "so do I. I can assure you, so do I."

As did the Chief. "Excuse me," O'Brien challenged his particular jolly Bajoran giant with the trigger-happy finger, "but I was out fighting _wars_ when you were at home sucking your thumb. Okay? I was out fighting _wars._ So unless you're planning to use that thing -- which I don't suggest you even _try -- _get it out of my face on the count of one."

"Explains why we have a tendency to win," Bashir cleared his throat in offered explanation to anyone who might be remotely interested.

"Oh, yes," Garak was equally not willing to gamble Cardassia's National Treasury the Chief wouldn't up and throw a right-cross into the discussion. "Yes, that it certainly could."

"Or at least go down fighting," Bashir grinned down the line of stony faces to the mildly amusing spectacle of another Bajoran security officer, this one trying Worf's patience. He was a slender man. Not too thin and not extraordinarily tall, though not short. Simply noticeably hardly the size of the defensive line behind him or of Worf with whom he appeared to take great umbrage. Otherwise he was generally unremarkable. Sandy-blond hair roughly around Bashir's age of thirty or so with a narrow face and strong, determined chin interestingly squared to the point it almost appeared to have been sheared off. "I'm sure it's been said before. It can be somewhat difficult to tell an Irishman from a Klingon and vice versa."

"Maybe for you," the Bajoran sneered, personally having no particular difficulty picking Klingons, Cardassians, or for that matter Human Neutrals out of the crowd. She was lucky Shakaar's, Janice Lange. She had no idea how lucky she was. In a universe where every moment and every point counted, now was not the time, the conference room not the place to address the issue waiting to be addressed emphatically loud and unmistakably clear.

"Quite." Bashir cleared his throat again at the officer's expression of ill-temper with a nod to Worf. "You were saying?"

Worf huffed. "I am saying," he reiterated to the officer, "I am Worf. Your Security Chief. As I have explained to Captain Sisko this morning, there is a reason why I am not in uniform. A point as to why you may not recognize me."

"Actually, I'm your Security Chief," Dax returned to the table with a pat of Worf's arm and a promise for all of the Bajorans. "It's all right. Worf initially confuses most people even when he is in uniform."

"Oh, right," O'Brien scoffed, his temper and face still burning red and hot, "like no one _notices_ a Klingon, I don't care if he's wearing a dress. Who the hell do you think he is?"

"Chief," Dax suggested.

"Stick to your own side of the line and I'll stick to mine," O'Brien reminded. "Which, just for the record," he apprised the crowd, the one clustered around the table, the rest of them inside the conference room and out in the corridor, "the name's O'Brien. Miles Edward O'Brien, Chief Engineer. I've been sitting here eating lunch for the last hour along with the rest of them, and that includes _you."_ he zeroed in on Mister Big Mouth. The one Worf could have snapped in half between his thumb and forefinger if he felt in the mood. "Now, if you will excuse me, I'm going to see if the woman's all right --_what_ I was planning to do. And if any of you don't like it, _try_ and stop me."

They didn't try and stop him. Neither acting Heads of Security Commanders Dax nor Worf for reasons other than abiding by the nod of the Head of Security Odo. There was no reason to stop O'Brien. What had happened was over, and it was a matter of opinion if anything really happened at all.

Reason number two, likely more significant than number one, was that nod of approval sent Odo's way to grant the Chief his way. One Odo merely passed on and whose origins could be traced to Captain Sisko the undisputed Head of the whole nine yards not too involved with reminding Legate Damar of that fact not to notice what his senior staff might be doing. Especially since it was plainly clear what Damar's senior staff was doing. Nothing. Who probably settled back the quickest into picking up his lunch where he left off was Gul Dukat. Easy for him to do, he was the one who started the ruckus. Pfrann followed a close second, rejoining his brother at their table.

Who was having a little difficulty resettling other than the Chief was Leeta. Who was clearly upset in a different way was Doctor Lange. Horrified, crossed Odo's mind. Following disbelief, followed by deep, almost profound sadness. The young woman's face expressed a gamut of emotions in just under a minute, ultimately breaking out into a smile around the time Kira stopped stamping her feet. Odo had no idea why. Suspecting it had something to do with being Human, Neutral, female, young. All of the above or just the idea she had yamok sauce in her hair. Something Chief O'Brien did not yet know and would be further outraged to learn by the look on his face as he approached. Odo stood a little taller in his official brown uniform. Not because he planned on meeting the Chief head on, simply because he loved his job.

"I think I might take umbrage to that." Quark crawled out from under a convenient nearby table to say.

"That's your problem," Odo assured.

"Not your latent tendencies for dictatorship. That." Quark scrutinized the gaily splattered rear wall, floor and buffet table. "What is it? Yamok sauce or someone's blood?"

"Yamok sauce," Odo agreed.

"Uh, huh," Quark said. "Okay, I'll bite. Is it over with or what? Did it start? What did I miss? Did I miss anything? Something? Nothing? Hello," he insisted above Leeta's caterwaul for Rom. "Don't pay any attention to her, answer me. She just realized she broke a nail, I'm trying to find out if I'm alive or dead. The two cannot compare…What?" he snarled to Rom toddling over. "A broken fingernail does not qualify for hazardous duty pay or time off for cosmetic repairs. He's Cardassian. She's lucky that's all she broke. Trust me. If it were feasible to rip a Cardassian's head off and hand it to him, his old man would have been dead a long time ago. Where was I?" he returned to Odo. "What's the bottom line? Are we on for nine o'clock or not? Table for forty-six? Sixty-three? That should put enough empty seats between them."

"That's sound about right," Odo agreed.

"I was afraid you were going to say something like that," Quark sighed. 

Back to who also didn't attempt to stop the Chief. That would be Commander Dax's little group of hot-headed Bajorans to whom she offered the following golden piece of advice: "Lighten up, fellows."

"It wasn't a question of not recognizing anyone, Commander," the Bajoran Captain made no excuses himself or his group, merely his point for the official record.

"No," Dax understood that. "It's a question of doing your job -- great job," she gave him a congratulatory pat on the arm. Intentionally. She wanted to see just how ill-tempered and far he was willing to take it. Just about that far, though he wasn't happy about it. So he was a controlled extremist. She made a note to herself to have Odo pull the officer's psychiatric profile to run it by Julian and Benjamin to see if Benjamin wanted to order a new one, or dismiss the officer on the grounds of just not willing to take any chances. She had an idea Benjamin would dismiss him and it would help to keep things tidy on the Bajoran front if he had Julian's analysis in hand when the transmission went out to the UFP and Shakaar.

"How's your psychiatry?" Dax twinkled at Bashir when the group of Bajorans went their merry way and before she went hers. "I may want you to take a look at a profile for Benjamin."

"Psychiatry?" Bashir startled. "The Chief's not acting that much out of the ordinary, is he? Not in my opinion. Certainly not to where a psychiatric evaluation is warranted."

Dax didn't know what to say. Half of her wanted to laugh. The other half? "Julian…" she hesitated.

Bashir winked. "There's more to good health than exercising and eating right. I believe I may have mentioned that last night. I'm sure the root of the Chief's troubles lie in that he's had another heart to heart talk with Keiko still refusing to return to the station and he's annoyed. Plain and simply annoyed."

"Actually," Dax smiled, "I think if Lange invokes anything in the Chief, she invokes his fatherly side."

"As opposed to Kira's motherly instincts?" Bashir grinned. "That's not what she invokes in me, but, yes, you're probably right."

"As far as the psychiatric evaluation…" Dax leaned over with a whisper for his ear alone rather than chance causing all out panic that they might be at the mercy of 300 heavily armed terrorists rather than under their protection, "I meant Worf's Bajoran friend."

"Oh," Bashir said. "Well, that's a given, certainly yes. I'm confident the man's profile in general would frighten most of us into a fetal state, as would the vast majority of them. We are talking Federation and Bajoran Special Forces. I'm not quite sure just how 'normal' normal can be…at the very least," he tossed an explanatory aside Garak's way, "they certainly a friendly little group, wouldn't you say?"

"Oh, yes," Garak just nodded. "Oh, yes. Quite congenial, as you say."

"Yes, well, what I say and what I mean are two different things -- rather like Dukat." Bashir pulled up his chair to sit back down and finish his lunch now that the excitement was over. "To be quite frank, I'm not even quite sure what the excitement was. From my perspective -- make that _vantage point_," he winked at Garak with a flutter of his hand towards the yamok sauce. "Are you through with that?"

"This?" Garak picked up the cruet mildly perplexed.

"Acute desperation coupled with general curiosity," Bashir admitted. "I've been eating lunch with you practically every day for the past six years, and I still don't know exactly what it is -- what is it? Some Cardassian version of ketchup? One hundred different uses, by far the vast majority of them to disguise something you don't like, or rather not know what it is?"

"Oh, well, I'm not quite sure I'm quite sure of that," Garak passed on his world's traditional compliment to one's evening, noon and morning meal for Julian to decide for himself.

"It's as vile as ketchup," Bashir pronounced, tasting the bitter-sweet concoction that looked like watery jam, was sticky like glue and smelled about as appetizing as rubber cement.

"Is that good or bad?" Garak wondered.

"Either way it'll have to do," Bashir liberally spooned the sauce over his salad. "Daresay one's liable to inspire a riot by asking someone else so much as to pass the salt, please."

"Oh, yes," Garak agreed. "Yes, that is entirely possible. You're right…As were you," he encouraged, mildly intrigued himself to know what the fuss was actually all about, "saying something about your vantage point? Or from your vantage point?"

"Quite," Bashir carefully taste-tested his salad to ensure he wouldn't prefer to be eating his socks after all. "Not half bad. Takes a little bit of getting used to. Somewhat of an acquired taste -- an adult taste. Surely you wouldn't consider serving this to a child under the age of five without risk of sending their immature and developing digestive system into some sort of paralytic or fatal spasm?"

"Oh, yes," Garak promised. "And no, of course, to the latter…As is it interesting," he pressed, "always, how one person sees what another person doesn't necessarily…"

"Leeta," Bashir took a bit of his fork-full of greens, washing it down with a half a glass of root beer.

"Leeta," Garak paused.

"I'm quite sure Dukat said something moderately offensive and off-color to her, aren't you? Certainly to be expected. She is a remarkably attractive woman…and, well, to be quite frank…" he treated Garak with a confident and knowing masculine smile, the sleeve of his jumpsuit rested dangerously close to the rim of his plate. "The official uniform of Quark's Dabo hostesses isn't exactly designed to send a man screaming from the room. To the contrary, it is specially designed to capture one's attention, and capture our attention it does."

"How…brazen of you, Julian," Garak could only say. "Yes, how bold your theory."

Bashir straightened up with a shrug. "It's true. Seduction conceived, planned and executed. A matter of routine. Both the response and the reaction to the response…Am I breaking out?" he patted his forehead, feeling these little beads of sweat beginning to form along his brow. Rising to a near and immediate panic when an examination of his napkin revealed faint stains of purple, red and yellow. He dismissed the yellow; clearly the Chief's mustard. "Good heavens, I'm not starting to bleed, am I? Some sort of superficial hemorrhage of the subcapular blood vessels…"

"Julian!" Garak's cool, clammy fingers clamped over his wrist.

"No," Bashir breathed deeply. "No, course I'm not. It's only yamok sauce. The same is that is only mustard…I knew what the yellow was."

"Yes," Garak nodded understandingly. "And it will be our secret."

"Secret?" Bashir repeated. "What secret's that?"

Garak smiled. "You don't have to finish eating your salad, Julian, if you really don't want to."

"Not eat it?" Bashir stared at his plate. "What do you mean? Of course I want to eat it. Takes a little bit of getting used to that's all. As I said. But that's nothing to do with not wanting to eat it. Don't be absurd."

"As you wish," Garak nodded. "Back to this theory of yours…not to be callous or unkind."

"Bold and brazen," Bashir reminded. "I insist I'm neither. I hardly mean any offense to Leeta. She is a thoroughly charming and delightful woman. Interesting conversationalist -- and far more intelligent than one might think. Clever, certainly. Calculating in her own way. Half the charm of being a woman. With a woman. Around a woman," he grinned. "At least a portion of the time."

"As is Doctor Lange an extremely attractive woman," Garak nodded, "encompassing all of the above. Yes, I believe we may have also mentioned this."

"Well, the Chief certainly has, and I know I certainly have. But, no, I don't believe I was aware you also looked at Janice with…well, under a feminine light, shall we say? What do you make of the Chief? His actions. Reactions, is probably a better description. Is he acting somewhat out of character, or is it just me?"

"Out of character," Garak savored that thought, though not in regards to the Chief. "I must confess from my perspective Leeta appeared to be rising to the defense of Doctor Lange, rather than to her own."

"Janice?" Bashir said. "Well, no, I don't believe I noticed that."

"As far as the Chief…" Garak considered, because, yes, he admitted Julian's question had its intriguing qualities, as well as its own potential for trouble. "Boredom, perhaps. Frustration. Annoyance. As you suggest."

"I suggest," Bashir chuckled. A masculine chuckle again. Very masculine. "The Chief could very well find himself in hot water if he doesn't take a few steps back."

"Couldn't we all," Garak nodded. "Couldn't we all. Upon occasion, haven't we?"

"Perhaps you have," Bashir laughed. "If I ever have, I wasn't aware of it. If I ever do, I'm sure I'll come out of it just fine."

"I believe you. I do." Garak studied him, eating his lunch, intermittently patting his perspiring brow. "Julian?" he smiled.

"What?" Bashir said.

"Have you considered not wearing your uniform under your jumpsuit? The thermostat controls of the immediate area have been set higher than what you might normally be accustomed to…No doubt to ensure the comfort of our Cardassian guests," Garak tipped his head in commendation of Captain Sisko's gesture of good will. No doubt with the idea in mind of it being one less complaint he would have to listen to. As were the lights of the conference room, corridor and auditorium, softened to a gentler amber hue. Though Garak likewise wasn't willing to bet Cardassia's shaky financial security that the moderately dimmed light could be found to be a contributing factor to everyone's inability to see the forest for the trees except when it came to the ironic matter of Chief O'Brien.

"No, I hadn't thought of that," Bashir shook his head. "I have considered turning out in formal dress this evening. Chances are quite good I will -- 2100 I believe? Quark's?"

__

"Quark's?" Dukat stared at his daughter standing there complacently.

Ziyal shrugged. "What are the lives of a few hundred in a universe immune to the cries of millions?"

"I don't care about millions," Dukat insisted. "I'm care about my son -- sons!" he shoved Ziyal into the path of Kira. "Talk to her. She can't refuse to listen, not to you!"

"I can't, father," she apologized. "I wish I could, but it doesn't seem to work that way."

"Then how does it work?" he demanded. "When I can see you perfectly, hear you as well?"

She was there in front of Anar's tricorder and gone a moment later, not even a residual trace of energy registering, and yet he knew he saw her; the striking outline of a young Cardassian woman in civilian dress, her proud beauty startling, a perfume of sweet wine surrounding her. 

"What's wrong?" his son sensed what he perceived as his father's foreboding.

"I'm not sure anything is wrong," Anar hesitantly confessed, far less shaken by the vision than he was perplexed. 

"You can feel their souls," Sian nodded down the long, darkened narrow corridor of ore rooms. 

"Their souls are with the Prophets," Anar replied. "Other than the condemned. The child was Cardassian, not Bajoran."

"What child?"

Anar didn't know, only that her body was dead and he was beset by a sudden and inexplicable thirst for a cooling glass of Bajoran Spring wine. "Not in celebration of your death, child; it is the heat of the ore bays only, " he meditated to ease her soul. "You have less to fear from me today then you may once have had. If my son and I disturb your grave, we apologize. Our quest is one of peace, not slaughter -- "

__

"To preserve the future of our two worlds and others, not avenge the past." The Prophets answered in their androgynous chorus, dried seeds of grapes raining down like tiny pellets at his feet. The young woman was back in front of his tricorder, her flesh seared with phaser burns, her bones drying brittle and white.

"All is forgiven?" Anar guessed perhaps she waited to hear? She smiled slightly and was gone, leaving him as perplexed as before.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

The afternoon session was quiet. No history making concessions or confrontations. Dax was glad about that. Benjamin's anxiety level was noticeably high when he retired to the stands shortly before the gavel came down at 1637.

"Everything all right?" Odo asked.

"Everything is fine," Sisko promised. "I'll just be glad when the day is over."

"The first one is the usually the hardest," Dax smiled.

"Hm," Sisko rubbed his tired eyes. "Now I know why someone has to be in a mood to play chess."

"Dukat is difficult," Worf agreed.

"Slow, Mister Worf," Sisko assured. "He is slow. Cogitative." He settled back, attempting to relax his nerves feeling frazzled. "Laborious. Pedantic in his thinking. What the man could be mulling over for twenty minutes in between each point, escapes me. And here I thought his father was tiring."

The gavel did come down eventually though, signaling the end of the sessions until tomorrow. The visiting delegates retired to their respective quarters under close guard; accompanying security under strict orders as to the expected time of reassembly for dinner. Benjamin's generosity was limited to allowing a ten minute leeway either side of 2100. No one would be granted entry to the cordoned off area of Quark's prior to 2050, and they better have one damn good, incontrovertible reason if they were not there by 2110.

"Death?" Dax cringed to Odo as they stood at attention along with the rest of Sisko's senior staff and their immediate deputized assistants.

"That's about the size of it," Odo grunted.

"That includes Doctor Lange, Major," Sisko quietly reminded Kira, no accusation in his insistence of fair and equal treatment for all. He understood there was some confusion this morning that had Lange thirty minutes late for Bashir's blooding screening, but he was anticipating no further difficulties this evening, or from now on.

"Understood," Kira said.

"What about the blood screenings?" Bashir asked.

"Mornings are sufficient, Doctor. No reason for overkill." Sisko ogled Morn and Leeta. Quark's bid for Rom's assistance was reasonable.

"Bar duty," Quark offered.

Sisko shook his head. "No one has permission to enter the bar or entertainment area except for the purpose of immediate entry or exit. Not to linger, and not to mingle. Chief O'Brien has done an excellent job personalizing the computer banks of each individual's quarters to provide a variety of entertainment programs, if entertainment is desired."

"Uh, huh," Quark said. "One word. Martok."

Sisko put up his hand to stay any further unnecessary elaboration with a nod of permission for Morn and Leeta. "I leave any required distraction of General Martok to your capable hands."

"How is Martok?" Dax smiled.

Sisko returned the grin. "Hog-tied and fighting mad."

"You can spare us the details," Odo grunted.

"Other than to say, order and attention to detail, Constable, is the order of the day. Curfew is sharp at 2300. That includes you, Major, Chief -- as well as you, Mister Garak."

"How flattering," Garak beamed.

"Yes," Bashir grinned, especially since the mandatory curfew apparently did not include him.

"It can," Sisko's eyes crinkled in amusement. His promise was serious though.

"Understood," Bashir added his nod to the roster.

"That's about it then," Sisko dismissed them to their own devices and amusement for the next two hours. "Doctor…" he paused to call in warning after Bashir.

"Just a joke," Bashir waved back over his head, departing the conference room on a swift trot to glean as much as he could from his temporary reprieve.

"Okay, fine," Quark waved Leeta on. "Go get your nail fixed. But it's coming out of your pay, not my profits…Honestly," he fumed out after them. "I know she's a Dabo Hostess. I realize she's a Dabo Hostess…"

"Some other time perhaps," Dax teased Worf. The only one of them Benjamin did not single out for one reason or another. Good, bad or indifferent.

"You are mistaken," Worf assured. "Captain Sisko honors me as always."

"You've had your fair share of scoldings," Dax winked, turning to Odo. "Have a minute?"

"Or two," Odo said. For her and anyone else who might be dallying for a specific reason. "What?" he challenged Garak.

"Merely to ask it there is anything specific you wish for me to do, or if I, too, may take advantage of our momentary freedom to complete Doctor Lange's shopping for her."

"Yes, well," Odo countered, "I can't see why your attendance would be required for dinner, so you probably can take all night."

Garak was injured. "Wounded, Constable," he insisted. "Shocked by your blatant disregard for Captain Sisko's orders. Not only does my presence sufficiently irritate our guests, providing a delightful alternative to Chief O'Brien's entertainment package, I just may not be able to control my subversive tendencies given the opportunity. You really cannot trust me."

"See you at nine," Odo nodded.

"Precisely, Constable," Garak swore. "Precisely."

"You were saying?" Odo prompted Dax. "If it's another death threat, you'll find them categorized under political affiliation, specific, general or unknown. From there by height."

"Height?" Dax said.

Odo shrugged. "I'm told that by noon it was beginning to become boring. To the surprise of no one, while not the tallest, Damar is in the lead. In contrast, Dukat trails in fifth place behind his brother, Shakaar and Captain Sisko."

"Benjamin?" Dax blinked as Worf stiffened.

"He knows," Odo assured. "As has Shakaar been apprised. The main interest seems to be aimed at the 'big three', if you will. We've no control over Bajor, but we do have control over the station -- the Captain's words. I have quarter reassignments for Damar and his group -- they're aware by now. As well as Doctor Lange who isn't aware. Now, is again preferable that she be made aware, but it's not mandatory. It can be after dinner, as long as it is immediately after dinner -- also, the Captain's words. Elsewise, I wouldn't develop a false sense of security if I were Dukat. Sure it's more to do with some lingering confusion over who actually is whom. That'll change. Probably."

"As should the quarter reassignment include the Captain," Worf insisted.

Odo looked at him. Worf sighed. "I will discuss it with him."

"You have all week," Odo agreed. 

"I take it that goes for Kira and the Chief also," Dax surmised.

Odo looked at her. She nodded. "I have all week as well -- I'll take care of relocating Doctor Lange now."

"It would be appreciated. Back to your turn."

"Pales by comparison," Dax admitted. "Worf came up against some minor resistance from a Bajoran security Captain today at lunch."

"Sounds more like a death wish," Odo grunted. "It's all right. We've also had a few of those. I'll reassign the officer and pull his record for review. Anything else?"

"Julian's opinion of his psychiatric profile? I'll already forewarned him."

"Then he also shouldn't mind now," Odo nodded. "My office. One hour. You'll have both."

"You're the best."

Not exactly the same high regard with which the militant Bajoran Maquis agent Hawk held his deputy's decision to banter with the Klingon Worf. An unforgiving man cloaked in an unremarkable relaxed demeanor, the youngest brother of Bajor's mysterious Anar wore no immediate discernible resemblance to the family Shakaar. The shadow was there though. Lost in a crowd, capable of fading into his surroundings, up close and in person, Hawk's aura lacking the luster of his elder brother, there was a quality of the eerie surrounding him instead. The eyes hollow holes in his skull. Hypnotic and commanding. His misappropriate serenity suddenly sinister and terrifying.

"Nice of you to show up." Hawk congratulated his deputy Assura upon his arrival to assume his vigilant post on the highly sensitive Cardassian corridor. The astonishment of the lone unsuspecting Bajoran security officer present in the small squad was immediately checked by a shot from Hawk's hand phaser searing through the back of the officer's neck, silencing any agonizing scream. He was dead before he hit the floor. His face and throat blackened, red ashes.

Assura muttered something under his breath about not seeing or liking the need to kill their own. He was not alone in his annoyance. Hawk did not like having to reaccess the station's security banks to change the duty rotation back to his original assignments. The windows in time to complete the various tasks to insure success and smoothness of their operation were small. Made possible by manipulating the data to accommodate for the infiltrators swelling the ranks of Shakaar's Special Forces for moments here, minutes there. It wasn't as if anyone personally knew any of these men. Three hundred faces dressed as one. At all other times their invisible guests -- a staggering fifty in number -- discarded their yellow jumpsuits, blending back into the crowd, six thousand strong. Odo's inadvertent relocation of Hawk's man could have proven to be much more serious than a nuisance. The answer then to both their complaints was clear. "You should have been here."

"If they scan the corridor, readings of residual tachyon will raise more than suspicions," Assura retorted, burying his brethren's body and soul in a vacant cabin for the time being.

"Suspicions," another of the agents laughed. "We certainly can't have that."

"I'm more interested in listening to what Damar might have to say," Hawk silenced the two of them. There were some interesting points to the read-out of the station's communication frequencies.

"He's talking to his ship," Assura replied; for a man who had just arrived he seemed to know a lot.

"Is he." Hawk borrowed a tricorder to take it for a thoughtful stroll, monitoring the subtle changes as he approached the crackling energy of the security force field in effect at the south-end of the corridor. 

Assura nodded from behind him. "The interference would also effect security's ability to identify and trace the signal."

"Would it." Hawk glanced up at the field within arm's reach of him. "Are you sure it's Damar?"

"Damar, Dukat," Assura shrugged. The distance separating the two quarters was nominal. "Why?"

"Are you sure it's a communication frequency?" Hawk replied. "Third cabin on the right."

"What?" Assura snatched the tricorder away from him.

"Transporter carrier wave." Another agent reported from down the hall. "Third cabin behind you…on the right."

"Dukat's." Hawk eyed the security force field with its dancing pretty lights. He stepped into it, the harmless bolts of deception slipping off his uniform like rain. He nodded. "What do we have here."

"Damn it all!" Anon's fist struck the computer console with enough force to split a deep crack through the read-out display, Pfrann lingering at his side to criticize.

"How are you going to explain that?"

"I'm not," Anon said. "Don't aggravate me. They moved her, all right? They moved us. They moved Janice. If we are xenophobic, they are paranoid…Tan!" he hollered over his com badge. "I need a security bypass modular now!"

"What?" Pfrann stared at the door and the small army of security officers outside.

"For me, Pfrann," Anon's wrist waved briefly over his head in reminder of the proximity detector implant. "For me. Not for the security field. Me."

"You can't even find her!" Pfrann insisted.

"I found her," Anon turned from the display to snatch up the bypass modular transported by Tan. It was intact. "Excellent!" he squeezed it tightly. "Now me, Tan!"

"What do you mean you?" Pfrann's cheeks were puffing in and out like a fish gasping for water.

He meant him. "I'm used to it. It makes Janice sick."

"Used to it!" Pfrann's boot sent Tan's molten and fused test container crashing across the floor. "The station's shields are engaged. Why do you think you couldn't find her?"

"No," Anon said. "That's why Tan was having difficulty tracking her. Me, I just had to make a few adjustments to the ion particle stream."

"You can't transport!"

"Watch me." Anon's voice tinkled away with his molecules.

"And they're engaged for a reason!" Pfrann shouted after him, into the air. "Anon!"

__

"Transport complete." Tan's voice answered his wail.

Pfrann gripped the sides of the console, his head hung. He took a breath, activating the security matrix. "Restoring security field…twenty-five percent."

"It's a hologram," Assura quickly swept the area. "The field is being contained above us…Or he's trying to contain it," he winced when a sudden burst of live energy jabbed Hawk like a thousand needles causing him to immediately jump clear. "The Hawk? Your brother?" he clarified.

Hawk shook his cold and tingling shoulders and arms. "May the Prophets have mercy on his soul if it is. Deactivate the thing. Make his life easier for him…And mine for me." he accepted the tricorder back.

"Understood." 

The force field came down and Hawk stepped through the holographic projection to monitor the readings from the other side.

"Three hundred meters to the left along the adjoining corridor," a third agent reported. "Field appears to be intact."

"I wouldn't count on it," Hawk shook his head. Ion was a notorious disturbance factor, commonly rendering most systems functionally unreliable and unstable.

"That includes transport capabilities," Assura reminded.

"Not as difficult as shields," Hawk assured. "It would take more than a blast from a quantum torpedo to pierce a hole in this fortress the size of a pin…Something," he hinted, "Captain Sisko would probably notice."

Notice. The six of his men looked around. "He wouldn't notice this?"

Hawk laughed. "No, he'd notice. Good thing we aren't security. Cardassian arrogance, gentlemen. As impeccable and reliable as their punctuality…and timing."

Damar stepped into the corridor with his Assistant Paq and a sullen glare for the group of them gathered at the south end of the corridor. "Is it working?"

"To specifications," Hawk promised. "Something you need, Legate? You have another hour until dinner."

"A conference with my representatives."

Hawk watched Damar's meaty hand swish impatiently towards Dukat's door.

"It's allowed!" Damar snapped.

"Disable the field," Hawk instructed Assura.

"Disabling," Assura randomly accessed his tricorder.

"I could have done that," Hawk stepped through the 'disabled' field with a subtle flick of his tricorder in hand.

"What does he know," Assura shrugged.

That was a good question. What did Legate Damar know? Hawk might not have the tailor Garak's scrutinizing powers of observation…or maybe he did. He had a gambling streak. "You have ten minutes," he activated the security bypass module, releasing Dukat into the hands of his own gods.

"I have an hour," Damar breathed his heavy stench in his face.

"Suit yourself," Hawk shrugged, granting his Legate and assistant entry.

"Always!" Damar said.

"Sometimes it's easier to just agree,." Hawk returned to monitoring those interesting readings of his tricorder.

Assura scoffed. "It was the Klingon who overreacted, not me. You want everything -- "

"_I want,"_ Hawk interrupted, "the conference canceled. I don't care who cancels it, or why…So we'll just give Captain Sisko a little nudge." he stopped at the force field again. "He's reactivated it."

"Activated?" His men whirled on the cabin door, phaser rifles ready.

"Relax," Hawk suggested. "We want to be able to get out of here. Dukat's the one playing with the station's systems, not us…I'll admit I'm curious as to why." his instinct telling him being Cardassian was enough. Power. Control. Deception. Deceit; he stared at the field. "Why would you have questioned my brother as being the one responsible rather than Dukat? Adon's interest is saving his precious Janice. What does that have to do with Dukat?"

Assura didn't answer him.

"I suggest you do," Hawk advised. "If you love his immortal soul as I do."

"They're friends," Dak'jar complied from the back row. "Your brother's interest is in saving his precious friends."

"What is this family coming to," Hawk finally sighed.

"Open…closed. That way you can carry it in your pocket."

Dax tried not to notice Kira pressing a personal phaser into Janice's hand but it was difficult.

"I don't have any pockets…" Janice looked down on Kira's strong fingers closed around her hand.

"Under your pillow then." Kira's answer was a second or two delayed. "You can put it under your pillow."

"My pillow?" Janice glanced in the direction of her sleeping area where all of these boxes from Garak were piled high on the bed. 

"All right, we'll go over it again…" Kira moved Janice out of sight of Dax waiting patiently in the sitting room. "The setting is for light stun. Damage index is zero. You won't hurt anyone."

"Oh, I know I won't," Janice assured.

"Not even by accident," Kira smiled. "It's all controlled by the station's computers. You don't have to do anything. Just point and press the trigger…you have a steady hand."

"I do?"

"You're an archeologist." 

Janice stared at the phaser. "Actually, I can be clumsy…"

"I doubt that," Kira shook her head. "Don't worry about it; anything. I just want you to have it. You don't have to carry it. You can keep it here."

"Under my pillow," Janice understood.

"Wherever," Kira agreed. "Time to get dressed. Fix your makeup -- "

"Makeup?"

Kira paused. "You don't wear makeup?"

"No," Janice said. "Why? Do you?"

"A little," Kira admitted. "Well, maybe a little…"

"Your eyes," Janice smiled at Kira's dark, full lashes almost a deep purple in the light. "It looks nice. They're so expressive."

"So are yours," Kira promised. "So are yours -- Forty-five minutes. I'll be back if I can. If not, it'll be security -- you know the routine."

Kira left with Dax strolling along beside her, hands clasped behind her back.

"You didn't see that," Kira finally broke the silence between them aboard the turbolift.

"That's a lot to ask," Dax admitted.

Kira stopped. "It's a lot to ask of her."

Dax thought about that. Comes with the territory came to her mind, but that wasn't really fair. There were delegates, Federation and otherwise whose careers did not find them so personally close to such an explosive and controversial issue. "The threats have been against Shakaar," Dax tried that approach.

"She's his representative!"

"Well, that's like saying Jake is Benjamin's son."

"No it isn't," Kira insisted. "Jake's not sitting in the auditorium. If he was, then, yes, you could say that. I would listen."

"Kira, Janice hasn't even been mentioned."

"It's the first day!"

"All right," Dax put up her hand, much like Benjamin commonly did. As much like Benjamin, Kira was not immune to first day jitters.

"Thank you," Kira said.

"Oh…" Dax wasn't so sure Kira should thank her rather than she should thank her intuition.

"What intuition?" Kira peered at her.

Dax smiled. "I really don't think Lange will use the phaser?" As a matter of fact she wouldn't be surprised if Lange put the hand phaser it in the replicator the moment the door closed.

"Replicator?" Kira frowned.

"Replicator," Dax nodded.

"It's hazardous," Kira said. "If she's going to put it anywhere, she should put it the hazardous waste disposal."

"I'll leave you to explain that to Benjamin when the system shuts down for an hour to reprocess it," Dax agreed. "Along with the weapons inventory."

"Oh," Kira said. "Oh, well, the inventory is simple. The phaser's mine. As far as the replicator…"

"Yes?" Dax said.

"What's an hour," Kira shrugged. "We're on standby alert. Shields _are_ engaged. No, phasers aren't energized -- "

"But deflector fields are in place throughout the station," Dax nodded. "You're right. It's a wonder we don't experience some sort of temporary, minor overload somewhere."

"All right, I'll tell Benjamin," Kira waved. "I'll tell him."

"That's my little terrorist." 

Dax left Kira to drop by Odo's office and pick up the Bajoran officer's record and Julian's report.

"Julian gave it his attention, I see," she was impressed as she scrolled through the analysis.

"Reasonably, yes," Odo grunted.

"Seems pretty detailed to me. I just have one question -- why is it wet?'" she wiped the padd off on the leg of her trousers.

"We were in the shower preparing for our date," Odo admitted. "I tried that."

"The two of you?" Dax laughed.

"Yes, well, not exactly," Odo said. "Make that Bashir was in the shower. I was outside it listening to him talk."

"Worf sings," Dax disclosed and left to find Benjamin.

"Probably something someone needs to know," Odo agreed.

Dax found Benjamin in his office, absently toying with his baseball as he read through Damar's proposal and a few other padds scattered around on his desk. He looked up immediately when she entered.

"Sorry for the intrusion," she apologized. "But I wanted you to know Worf had some minor difficulty with a Bajoran Special Forces Captain this afternoon at lunch."

"No, please. Thank you," Sisko reached immediately to hail Odo.

"Odo's already reviewed the officer's service record," Dax stopped him. "I've had Julian take a look through his psychiatric profile…his report's right here. …"

"Thank you…" Sisko slowly accepted the padd.

"For the time being I've had Odo reassign the office from the Cardassian corridor to general crowd control along the Promenade."

"Also very thoughtful of you, Commander," Sisko replied quietly. "On the other hand, I think I should have been apprised of the situation before any decisions or changes were made." He stood up.

"Did Worf try talking to you about changing your quarters?" she smiled.

Sisko's stare was bright, wide and incensed.

"Sorry," Dax apologized again. "Benjamin, I wasn't trying to eclipse your authority."

"No," Sisko dropped the padd with a bang down on his desk. "You were doing your duty as Head of the Bajoran Security detail by bringing your concerns to the attention of Odo -- who should have, in turn, brought them to _my _attention." His weight leaned heavily on his hands as he leaned across his desk. "I don't appreciate presumptions being made on my behalf. Anymore than I appreciate being second-guessed, interrupted — or reading some psychiatric report! Where is Bashir?"

"In the mirror?" Dax grimaced. Her attempt at humor escaped him. She had a feeling it would. "Knowing Julian?" she offered. "He was just in the shower fifteen minutes ago."

"Thank you!" Sisko was out of his office and gone.

"Worf tried to talk you into changing your quarters," Dax nodded.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

"If you're looking for something remarkable in the man's profile," Bashir critiqued his wet hair in the mirror, finally just opting to comb it back. "I'd have to say the most remarkable aspect of our aggressive Bajoran is that his profile is so unremarkable -- in fact, I believe I did say that in my report." he turned around to Sisko with a smile.

"I…" Sisko put forth an effort to explain, not exactly having expected to find his Chief Medical Officer attired in his underwear.

"You don't have the report," Bashir nodded. "I can see that."

"Yes," Sisko agreed.

"Quite all right. I have a copy, naturally." Bashir shuffled around his night stand looking for the correct padd. "I've been organizing my old journal files…one of those things everyone is always meaning to do…yes, here it is. Generally unremarkable, is what I actually said. I go on from there to explain in rather ponderous detail what I mean -- Mind?" he extended his report.

"Mind?" Sisko accepted the padd.

"If I dress while you read," Bashir indicated his person.

"Oh, no," Sisko assured. "No, feel free."

"Thank you," Bashir pulled on his trousers. "I wouldn't go as far as calling it an innate sense of personal shyness most Humans share when confronted by a naked man -- or woman, as the case may be. Not that I'm naked, or even obscenely unclothed -- unless one considers one's undergarments to be obscene," he pulled on his T-shirt. "If so, please pardon the T-shirt. It's not meant to offend. Any questions?"

"Perhaps regarding the report," Sisko said.

"Yes," Bashir did anticipate the possibility of that. "The long-winded technical jargon is for the UFP, Bajor, Cardassia, and whoever might be interested. Just so it sounds like both you and I know what we're talking about. I believe that was Jadzia's concern. Second to insuring we did not have a militant extremist in our midst -- we don't. Not in my professional opinion. That's my bottom line. The choice to dismiss the man, naturally is your option. Executive privilege. I really don't see how anyone could argue with that. If you insist upon hearing my actual opinion…"

"I do," Sisko nodded.

"A choice of several options. He may not like Klingons. He may not trust Klingons not to overreact themselves. He may also have interpreted Worf's response to be an overreaction. We were all at the same table. I was there. In fairness to the officer, we all reacted. Myself included."

"He's a highly trained professional, Doctor."

"And he had at least three highly trained professionals along with a fourth, Garak, immediately leaping to their feet in response to some off-color remark Dukat made to either Janice or Leeta -- I thought it was Leeta. Garak seems to think it was Janice. Regardless. The situation had already been stopped cold by Kira before we even got to our feet."

"Mister Worf is well within his authority to respond, investigate, or take control of any situation above and beyond any of the Bajoran or Federation Special Forces."

"With all due respect to you and Mister Worf, who Mister Worf is, is a Klingon. As awful as that sounds, I'm afraid in this instance you will find it to be the basis behind the officer's attitude. If you want to dismiss him under the grounds that he is bigoted, please, by all means do so. Don't misunderstand me, I agree with you utterly. We don't need such a person in our midst. No one does. I said as much to Jadzia when she asked me to review his profile. I'm simply saying after my review, coupled with my own participation and witness to others' participation, it would be unfair to everyone, the Klingon Empire especially, to blacken someone's career record by labeling him a suspected militant when what he is, is a suspected racist. Suspected, because there's also a possibility all the Chief's blustering about I'll show him could have been a contributing factor. The Bajoran Security Captain had one, in other words, he didn't need two of us arguing our points against his."

"I wasn't aware of the Chief's involvement to that extent," Sisko was concerned now that he was aware.

"You were aware to the extent you granted him leave of the table to investigate for himself if Janice or Leeta were harmed in any way," Bashir smiled. "Again, I thought it was Leeta. The Chief, quite emphatically, as well as Garak, as I mentioned, believed it was Janice. It's still all right, in any event. We all have a tendency to overlook traits in our friends that we are quick to condemn in people we don't know. For the simple reason we don't know them. Not the basis of their reaction or belief, nor how far they will go. Any other questions?"

"No, I believe that about covers it," Sisko handed him back his report.

"Damn," Bashir snapped his fingers. "Here I was hoping to share with you my views on vulgar, presumptuous Cardassians -- not in advocacy of specie stereotyping. I'm sure there are thousands of Cardassian males as upright, decent and polite as you or I…or at least the Chief when it comes to conducting ourselves around beautiful women…" he returned to the mirror to check on his hair. "I do have a question of you before you go."

"Fire away," Sisko granted.

"How do I look?" Bashir grinned back at him in the mirror.

"Look?" Sisko hesitated.

"The jacket," Bashir pointed toward the bed. "You're right, of course. What am I thinking…" he scooped up his dress uniform Sisko hadn't even noticed laying on the bed. "I prefer the trousers to the skirt," he explained his trousered legs under the knee-length coat. "I don't know about you, but my legs aren't exactly my best feature."

"A personal preference myself, Doctor," Sisko acknowledged. "No reason to explain."

"Well?" Bashir said.

"Yes, well," Sisko agreed. "And, well…" he nodded. "Heavy date?"

"I'd like it to be," Bashir said. "Not this week, of course. Next. This is just…well, a preview is probably fair to say. To dinner. Dancing. Helping me to organize my old journal files…If you're wondering who. Janice Lange. Since she isn't twelve years old, I can't see why there wouldn't be any reason for me not to pursue her -- within reason, of course. I'll like to think I'm not the Chief. What do you think?"

"I…" Sisko said. "The Chief?"

"Mid-life crisis," Bashir promised. "Nothing to be alarmed over even though he's hardly mid-life. Still, it's a common affliction that affects most men somewhere between their forties and seventies. You could be in the throes of the phenomenon yourself and not even realize it."

"I'll try to keep that in mind," Sisko nodded.

"Is that a yes?"

"Yes?" Sisko's blink was almost innocent.

"To asking Janice for a date. I'm not sure I need your permission, but it probably doesn't hurt to ask. After all, while the conference might be over come the end of this week, I doubt very much if the repercussions will be. If there are any repercussions -- I'm certain there will be one or two."

"Yes…" Sisko said. "No, Doctor, you do not need my permission. More the young woman's I would imagine…I'm sorry," he shook his head. "Perhaps it's me. But I just can't seem to take any of this as lightly apparently as the rest of you."

"Well, barring saying I hardly doubt if anyone is taking anything lightly," Bashir smiled, "I would have thought along with that Captain's pip came immunity to such primal fears."

"Primal fears, Doctor," Sisko assured, "are fears of such things as the dark. The woods at night."

"Quite," Bashir said. "Because in the dark that chair looks like a monster, as in the woods monsters lurk. Just because we know our monsters from our furniture and trees by our age doesn't mean we're any less afraid of them."

"I wouldn't say I was afraid, actually." Sisko's head cocked in consideration of the idea.

"No," Bashir's smile returned. "Not personally. Simply afraid of our monsters for us."

"Interesting," Sisko concluded. "Very interesting. Now, if you will excuse me, I just may owe two friends -- two very good friends," a smile played his lips, "an apology."

"Not at all…Oh, and…" Bashir called down the corridor after him, "if you're interested in my opinion regarding changing your quarters…I agree with Worf and Dax. Better safe than sorry."

"Don't push it, Doctor," Sisko suggested.

"Probably shouldn't at that," Bashir withdrew his head back inside his quarters. "With the Chief thinking he's someone somewhere between Captain Kirk and Hercules, is a bit of a risk factor you_ are…_Otherwise known as Captain Benjamin Sisko…" he gave himself a thorough, honest review in the mirror, picking up his comb. "Where I am Doctor Julian Bashir. Charming. Handsome. Brilliant and debonair. The woman would have to be out her mind to say no, which of course she isn't. She's charming. Attractive…"

Janice tossed the phaser on the bed and set to work opening up Garak's boxes. "Oh, now, this might have potential," she lifted out a long, pale pink dress, simply cut and reasonably modest with a dozen or so equally long pink cords designed to create some sort of pattern across her back.

"Wear that one!" Anon appeared behind her in the mirror to pull the gown out of her hands as she held it up to herself.

"All right," she shrugged.

"Good," Anon wrapped her up in his arms. "It's pretty. Soft…Did you get my message?"

"What message is that?" she laughed.

"This one," he kissed her. "And this one," he kissed her again, pressing her back towards the bed.

"Oh, but what about…" Janice groped for his arm, trying to keep her balance.

"Security bypass modular," Anon explained the contraption fastened around his wrist. "Like you, to them, I'm just another tree."

"Phase emitter," Janice slipped down onto the floor in hysterics when his knee came down on the trigger mechanism of Kira's phaser. The sensation of heat from the discard, suffocated and largely absorbed by the bed, sent him leaping three feet in the air. "I think you just killed my new shoes…But that's all right," she waved the gown. "The dress survived."

"Phaser," Anon sat back down on the bed, the personal phaser in hand. "This is the emitter…see? The window? Emitter. This is a phaser."

"If you say so."

"I say so," he assured, opening it and snapping it shut to its compact size. "Nice one. Federation type II. What's this?" he stuffed the phaser back under her nose.

"Readout display."

"_Power level_ indicator," Anon smiled. "And this?"

"One of them is for beam width and the other is for the settings."

"How many settings?"

"A lot," Janice nodded. "Damage index varying depending on if you're a living thing, or a pair of shoes…Did you kill my shoes?"

"No, I didn't kill your shoes," Anon took the box away from her. "Who gave you this? Kira? What is she trying to do? Kill you?"

"No, of course she isn't trying to kill me," Janice pulled the phaser out of his hand to fling it over her shoulder. "She said it's all controlled by station's computers…which is more than I can say about you." she pushed him down on the bed.

Anon laughed. "That's a lie. You want it to kill, that's what it will do."

"I don't want it to do anything," Janice shook her head.

"Good," Anon kissed her. "I'll take care of it for you."

"Good," she kissed him. "Because, funny, but you know, when someone starts talking about disruption and my central nervous system…" she stopped.

"What?" Anon said.

"I just remembered Kira's coming back?"

"No she isn't."

"Maybe," Janice nodded. "That's what she said. Along with all those security guards outside -- my task leader is Vulcan, she pointed him out to me. So when you see a Vulcan, you'll know I'm not too far behind. Who's yours?"

"Bajoran, of course. Bajoran. I hate that woman!" the back of his head banged back down into the bed in frustration.

"No, you don't hate her," Janice laughed. "Stop that. You don't hate anyone."

He looked at her.

"You don't," she firmly tugged on his arm trying to get him to sit up. "It's simply not allowed…Come on. You have to go. Never mind Kira, _you'll_ be stuck looking at this beige tunic again instead of my pretty pink dress -- this is assuming I can figure out where all the strings go. If not? Oh, well. If you overlook the Vulcan, I'm sure you'll notice the woman wrapped up like a strangled plant. That'll be me."

__

"Field reactivation is failing at twenty-five percent," Tan notified Pfrann pacing the floor when he wasn't sitting slumped in a chair._ "Corridor is unprotected at south end." _

"Damn it!" Pfrann flung himself up out of his seat. "Are you sure?"

__

"I'm sure if it's a security test there's enough ion to confuse their readings, not them." Tan countered. _"Holographic field is intact."_

"Yes, I see that," Pfrann snorted. "Wonderful. I'll meet Anon in the security holding area. You can transport the two of us from there…Severing communication and restoring field 100 percent. If you don't hear from me in ten minutes attempt transport once before returning Anon to the ship -- " he severed the communication abruptly, jumping back away from the console when he heard the prophetic sound of the door hissing open; it was Mister Damar. The Bajoran security team never even put their heads into the room. Pfrann loved their overt self-confidence as much as they professed to love his.

"Why, what do we have here…" Damar's scowl brightened with a sweeping glance over the computer console.

"Prove it," Pfrann's taunting laugh answered and Damar's head snapped up. Pfrann turned his back on him to reestablishing his communication's link with his ship. "Don't worry about it, Tan. It's only Mister Damar -- "

"Better idea!" Damar's heavy hand interrupted, knocking Pfrann back twenty feet; the seventeen year old a fly to him; as irritating as one. "How Dukat of you," he gloated over the display that showed everything from Sisko's security fields to his station's deflector shields. "Engaged," he chuckled. "Fifty percent. How predictable of you, Captain. Whatever group of terrorists aren't here yet, may just attempt to transport aboard from some…seemingly innocent ship." He ogled the security field apparently down for some reason; he couldn't imagine why. "Where is Dukat by the way…Or do I really have to ask…No, of course I don't." His finger left its imprint on the display, re-engaging the corridor's force field. "Now let's see what else interesting we might have here…why, what's this? Paq, do you see this? What could Dukat possibly be looking for in Sisko's security archives?"

Paq looked over the data logs with a nod. "A file's been deleted."

"Not aboard my ship, I trust," Damar smirked, hailing _his_ engineer. "Tan, I'm looking for the record of my transport lost in the Bajoran outer colonies eight months ago…You remember. You were there."

The record Tan transmitted wasn't tainted, it was blatantly false. Placing the transport three systems away from Lange's home world on the Cardassian border, below the fever line. Damar stared at it as if unable to believe the audacity of his Chief Engineer to side with Dukat against him. Pfrann's haunting laugh taunted him again; the child swaying across the floor.

"How predictable of you, Mister Damar. How delightfully _Cardassian _of you to plant such 'official' documentation linking two coincidences and manipulating them into one fact. In all my years of service to our esteemed Supreme Assembly, I have never seen such an obvious, flagrant attempt to discredit _any one delegate _as the appalling aspersions now being cast uponthe Representative of First Minister Shakaar. Clearly something in your own scheme must have gone awry. Suspect from the beginning, we now have unequivocal _proof!_" Pfrann caught sight of Anon attempting to transport on his pivot back to Damar. His head jutted forward into Damar's face, a glistening leer wetting his lips. "I can hear the UFP now, can't you? Not a hint of rumor. Not a whisper of any such _indiscretion_ until _after_ Dukat's proclamation of recognition of the Bajoran-Cardassian population."

Anon dropped down to one knee with a bang behind Damar as the transport completed, his molecules shaken from their dizzying dance through Sisko's security field. Pfrann shrank back from his diversionary effort with an exhausted sigh of relief just to see Anon. He snapped back to attention quickly with Damar's enraged lunge for his brother.

"Anon!" Pfrann warned, his feet already coming up off the floor to catch Damar's assistant Paq dead in the small of his back. The Cardassian staggered forward to meet Pfrann's arm slicing through the air like a Klingon's bat'telh. Anon pitched forward into a roll to avoid Damar. Janice's phaser out, he fired, toppling the Emperor looming over him in fury. His second shot dropped Paq reeling backward from a sharp strike to the chin from heel of Pfrann's hand.

Pfrann whirled shocked on Anon with the introduction of phaser fire into the fight. Anon got to his feet with a nod for the Federation toy in his hand. "Nerys. She gave it to Janice for protection. Why? You want it? Here." He tossed the phaser to Pfrann, turning away to reopen the communications frequency to hail Tan. "I have another two test articles for you. Mister Damar and Mister…what's his name?"

"Paq," Pfrann replied, looking over the phaser.

"And Mister Paq," Anon signed off from Tan with a grin for his brother. "All right. You're right. Sometimes he comes in handy. I couldn't do that. I couldn't begin to do that. All this with the head. This with the hands on the hips like I'm keeping my pants in place or something…Dukat," he laughed to Pfrann's uncertain scrutiny of his exaggerated imitation. "Legate Dukat. You were perfect. It gave me just enough time." To collect his molecules and realize his legs were attached to his torso and his head was attached to his neck. It only felt like they were reversed for a moment or two.

"Oh," Pfrann shrugged. "I thought you were talking about Gowron."

"Gowron?" Anon was mystified.

"The bat'telh," Pfrann's dismissed his choreographed attack of Mister Paq, Kira's phaser more on his mind.

"Bat'telh? What bat'telh?" Anon saw a broken lamp and one or two chairs.

"That's my point!" Pfrann thrust the phaser at him. "Sometimes you don't have one, anymore than you have one of these."

"That was Klingon?" Anon ignored the obvious for the vague. "That…this, and this?"

"_Yes!_" Pfrann correctly interpreted the waving arms as another demonstration of his talents. "When's the last time you tried engaging someone's _brain_ with your mind? You're not Vulcan, you're Cardassian. Crush his skull between your hands. I _guarantee_ you'll get his attention."

"Klingons are voles upright in clothing!" Anon snatched his phaser back. "What talons they don't have they adorn on their gloves and the tips of their boots."

"What?" Pfrann said. 

"All right," Anon returned the phaser. "You can teach me. That, I liked. That, I can do…And, _that_, you can keep; the phaser. Don't worry about it. Carry it. Sleep with it. Whatever you want to do…_except kill."_ he reminded Pfrann of the rule separating terrorist from Sentinel. "That's not a criticism, I kill. For reasons. Understand? Reasons. I don't want to hear _Anon, he looked at me like this, what did you expect me to do?_ Because you can't," he grinned at Pfrann's contorted expression of disgust. "Don't waste your time. It's all controlled by the computers. Settings 1 through 3, that's it. Light to heavy stun."

"_Who_ gave Janice this?" Pfrann verified the supposed programmed level of allowable use.

"Nerys," Anon agreed. "Yes, Nerys. Don't be clever or I'll take it back, and I can't. Janice isn't going to hug you, she hugs me. I don't want her to feel it."

"Shoot me," Pfrann clipped the phaser in place behind his back, under his tunic, "if I'm ever that much in love."

Anon laughed.

"I wouldn't," Pfrann recommended. "Security reports you at the top of the list of the Threat force, ahead of Mister Damar and Sisko…take a look. Apparently Shakaar and his Bajorans aren't as eager to accept your embrace of Ziyal as they are to complain about Cardassian slough. Security has been conducting tests…on the force fields…" he stared horrified at the door.

"What?" Anon said impatiently. "I see the report. I'm reading."

"No!" Pfrann snapped. "Damn the report. The field, Anon! The holographic field. It was intact during the time the deflectors were down."

"So?" Anon said.

"So?" Pfrann hissed. "So security has to know it a hologram."

"Sisko," Anon got the message. "The field is Sisko's, not mine. The ion is Sisko's, not mine. _Non-combative security maneuvers. _Understand? _Diversion. _So security can test, yes. To conserve energy. Whatever you want to think of. No one running down the corridor is going to chance impaling himself on the security field -- unless they're Klingon, yes," he waved away Pfrann's ready challenge. "A Klingon will impale himself with his arms outstretched for the glory of the Empire. The warrior is dead, but the Empire lives on. We get enough of them to do it, we won't have to worry about them. They'll take care of the threat themselves -- why do you think I've been having difficulty?" his hand slapped the display with annoyance.

"I don't know why," Pfrann swished away angrily to pace up and down in front of the door guarding it like the sentinel he was. "You're the engineer, not me."

"Yes, I am the engineer. And Sisko's ion is driving the engineer crazy, which it is supposed to do if I were the Threat force."

"Shouldn't they know that?" Pfrann insisted. "Security?"

"I would think they do," Anon agreed. "I would assume they do -- otherwise, Pfrann, I think they would have been in here, and _then_, yes. I would be concerned as to why they asking me about their own device measures that I am _using_ not _creating._ Understand? I am using them to my advantage…or trying to." he glowered at the console. "I have to get this to work…stay working. That transport would have killed Janice."

"Oh, better idea!" Pfrann howled on his right about face.

"No, I am not canceling the conference," Anon refused. "I didn't embrace Ziyal, I had to say something. We'll think of another way to strengthen the Intelligence force -- my way. I told you before I don't like this way, anyway. I'm not going to use Janice to do it."

Pfrann's muffled laugh penetrated Hawk's diligent analysis of his scans of the corridor's security system arrangement.

"Pfrann," Dak'jar identified the laugh along with the loudest of the low voices audible behind the cabin's closed door. "He's mastered his father's intonations to perfection."

"As has Sisko mastered his Prefect's security network," Hawk ran his tricorder along the ceiling at the junction with the wall. "Dukat isn't doing any of this -- utilizing it, yes, perhaps. The same as Sisko. The power grid has been in place for some time. The introduction of the holographic projector -- a year? Probably as a placebo to relieve the fears of some overly concerned Ambassador." He focused on his deputy. "Now, aren't you glad you didn't jump to conclusions?"

"Fools rush in," Dak'jar nodded. "A Human euphemism -- we have another transport carrier wave." 

One immediately followed by a scuffle loud enough not to require any technological investigation. Hawk sighed. "My nerves can't take this, gentlemen. I don't suppose it's possible they're just having a loud party?"

"If they are, it's about to get louder," Dak'jar advised. "Another carrier wave."

Hawk halted his deputy in his tracks. "Lateral, as the others?"

"Perfectly lateral," Dak'jar turned around to look down the corridor towards Damar's quarters. "I believe a couple of the guests were just sent home. I concur. It's a good thing we aren't security. The Hawk would love this. He would love it…" he glanced at Hawk. "Pardon me. Your brother would love it. Anar."

"That's better," Hawk agreed.

"You're right," Dak'jar shrugged. "Hawk is a soul of principle and honor. I don't know what's happened to him. I can't explain it."

"We'll leave it to the Prophets," Hawk gave Assura a light shove towards the force field and a snap of his fingers for the four of his other crew. "You, remove the corridor control panel -- and you," he instructed Dak'jar, "take a look at this power conduit with me."

"Whatever you say."

Damar was up off the floor of his quarters like a rabid dog charging for the door.

"What do you think you are doing?" his assistant grabbed for him.

"Killing the bastard," Damar shoved Paq aside. "Putting him and his _brother_ out of my misery. From there, the rest of Dukat's tribe."

He was through the door and into the corridor, the six of his assigned security task force _playing _with their forcefields, power conduits, "And control panels!" Damar's hand slammed the panel closed when the sound of his delicate footsteps thundering along the insulated floor had them turning around from their toys to him.

"Something else you need, Legate?" Hawk inquired with a mildly perplexed frown as to how the Legate managed to be standing there when last he saw him, not fifteen minutes ago, he was over there.

"If you weren't so _busy _with your _tests!" _Damar slammed the control panel door closed again_._ "As opposed to your attention to duty! You just might be able to answer that question for yourself!"

"Anar," Hawk smiled understandingly and calmly for the flustered Emperor. "Captain Anar, Legate. Please be reassured all of our efforts now, through to the end of your conference, are in the best interest of everyone, uppermost in our minds."

"For some reason, Captain," Damar breathed heavily, "your confidence fails to instill any confidence in me whatsoever."

"As do we all have our own opinions and beliefs, Legate," Hawk agreed. "Yours no less valid than mine. In the striving for universality, infinite in its diversity, I know there are Prophets who uphold the principle behind your work."

"And if you wouldn't mind sparing me the rhetorical ideology of your Prophets," Damar requested. "I'd rather listen to Martok drunk on blood wine."

"Was that really necessary?" Dak'jar questioned when the Legate opted to return to his quarters.

"They're not my Prophets nor yours," Hawk shrugged. "They're false. As false as ever a Prophet could be -- or did you mean Anar?" his smile didn't make it quite reach his eyes. "Let my brother find a new name for himself to dishonor."

"His name is Shakaar, as is yours," Dak'jar reminded. "You give Damar your brother, you may as well as hand him First Minister."

"First Minister," Hawk reactivated his tricorder. "You mean my nephew -- "

"I mean!" Dak'jar halted him, "First Minister. Don't flatter yourself, child. My loyalty isn't to you, it is to Shakaar. I will not have him jeopardized by you, no more than by some idiotic ideology of Anar's."

"My nephew," Hawk removed Dak'jar's hand coolly, "is growing as old and comfortably fat on his successes as my brother. My nephew's representative is Doctor Janice Lange. Conclusion. My nephew could use a nudge as much as Captain Sisko. Recommended course of action -- why, isn't this interesting," he nodded at his tricorder. "After careful analysis the only reasonable course of action is to kill Doctor Janice Lange. I believe we can manage that relatively easily? After all, it's not as if you could lose her in a crowd?"

"With that assessment, I agree," Dak'jar assured.

"I had a feeling you would." Hawk made a mental note to kill him along with Assura after their duty was done should Captain Sisko's security force fail to take care of any dangling loose ends for him.

END PART ONE

   [1]: mailto:gad@lynchburg.net



	2. Default Chapter Title

THE TIME OF HAGALAZ

PRESUMED GUILTY PART TWO

G. Dunbar gad@lynchburg.net

CHAPTER ONE

Stardate: Unknown

Place: Bajoran Outpost Station Deep Space Nine

In the year 2375 Eight months post Federation-Cardassian War

Time: _10…9…8…7…6_ _…_

"Nervous?" Odo mentioned to Dax as she and Worf and their accompanying army of security personnel posed just inside the entrance to Quark's awaiting their parade of respective diplomats.

"No," Dax shook her head though First Minister Shakaar of Bajor's distinctive yellow jumpsuit of the combined security detail of Federation and Bajoran Special Forces was the uniform for the evening affair. Dax knew, while Benjamin could not completely erase his mental image of 300 Red Coats standing in a line, he struggled to set aside his concerns that the suits were targets waiting to happen.

At least when it came to his people, Captain Benjamin Sisko, Federation Commander of the Bajoran outpost Deep Space Nine, struggled to set aside those concerns. His trio of senior staff appointed and acting Heads of Security for the sensitive Bajoran-Federation-Cardassian conference: Commanders Dax, Worf, and Chief Constable Odo. It was no easy task. Impossible, if Sisko admitted the truth to himself. As it was, the Captain remained adamant no committee member, or indirect assistant to the conference, would be required to blend into the blinding ranks of yellow statues to insure no mistake in their identity. It was absurd, the UFP's and Shakaar's reasoning. Beginning and not ending with their steadfast refusal to sequester the entire committee staff. Whatever image of unity Shakaar and the UFP hoped to promote between them and Emperor Damar's Cardassian Union to assist in furthering the peace talks by agreeing to discuss Damar's proposal of a Cardassian Consulate to be installed on Bajor Prime.

Whatever public opinion poll they were hoping to win, eight months was hardly enough time to soothe the stinging reminders of the recent Federation-Dominion war in which Damar's Cardassia had played a distinct and highly unfavorable role.

Make that Dukat's Cardassia. Sisko left behind Odo's detailing of the logged complaints and threats against the conference to begin his short walk to Quark's. He did not leave behind his belief in his Chief Constable. Odo's prediction of twenty-four hours being sufficient time for the initially confused residents and visitors of the station to do their research and sort out who was who among Damar's small staff of three, Sisko knew would be proven true. There would come a time when Gul Anon Dukat, Dukat's eldest son, would no longer find himself safely hidden behind the mask of his younger brother Pfrann; a face so flagrantly carved in a mirror image of the father's surgical enhancement crossed Sisko's mind. He wouldn't put it past Dukat, as he wouldn't put anything past Cardassia's former Emperor, even though realistically cast alongside his brother Anon Sentinel Pfrann was no one. Neither was Damar, not in this public's opinion. Two hours had passed since Odo had first notified Sisko that Anon Dukat continued to lag far behind all others in the accumulated death threats thus far. To the contrary, Sisko reigned highest on the list. Shakaar, a close second. Damar, a distant third. Sisko continued to reign two hours later, the order of ranking principally unchanged. It would change. Anon Dukat would catapult to the top. But it was much more than the order of things, it was the sheer staggering number of logged threats that had Sisko seriously debating the idea of ignoring the UFP and Shakaar and ordering the committee staff members sequestered for the remainder of the week before the inevitable happened.

"Well, yes," Dax acknowledged a moment later to Odo. "Maybe I am just a little nervous."

"Yes, well, then that should make you feel a little better," Odo grunted.

Bashir? Odo's remark surprised her. He couldn't mean Bashir. But it was Julian Bashir on a quick stride down the Promenade for Quark's. Handsome and dashing in the finest of the Federation's formal attire. Dax smiled for the station's Chief Medical Officer, understanding what Odo had meant as Julian crossed the threshold, his stride and smile aiming straight for her. 

"You look nice," Dax mentioned half in amusement and half in truth.

"Quite, so do you," his arm encircled her waist, his grin brushing her cheek before he turned to looked innocently around the bar. "Where to?"

"I will escort you, if you are concerned," Worf assured from behind them, his eyes rolling in his general and usual annoyance.

"Probably no to both," Bashir ignored him to look Dax up and down. "What?"

"Well…" she said tactfully.

"Yes, well, at least the damn thing fits you," he countered. "First one I've seen that does…and fairly flattering at that, I insist."

She looked him.

"What?" he smiled again.

"It's all in the belt," she assured.

"Might have something to do with it," he supposed. "Think it's more to do with you embracing Garak's and Leeta's recommendation of why bother struggling to fit anything underneath that you don't need; which you don't. Certainly not a spare change of clothing."

She gave up trying to be tactful. "That way," she pointed, urging Bashir to take her up on the suggestion; he did. Leaving her free to needlessly straighten her jumpsuit with a smile for Worf and a question for Odo. "What?"

Odo grunted. Reiterating what would make her feel better, and that was the approach of Captain Sisko with his personal entourage of Bajoran Special Forces. "Not so sure about him."

"He does look a little uncomfortable, doesn't he?" she agreed.

"Just a little."

"He appears as if he is traveling the gauntlet," Worf puffed in her ear. "As Chief of Federation Security Operations, it is I who should be accompanying Captain Sisko."

"Well, everyone does have their own pace," Dax replied, watching Benjamin's awkward march. "If that's what you mean."

"I mean," Worf insisted, "it is I who should be accompanying Captain Sisko. He is the principle target of threat."

"Not anymore," Odo disclosed.

"He isn't?" Dax startled. "Who is?"

"Dukat." Odo stepped out onto the Promenade to meet the Captain who did, yes, look as if he would prefer to be traveling a gauntlet. His own individual pace, as Commander Dax had observed, by the expression on Sisko's face, was being unduly hindered by the officers walking two abreast on either side of him. Two abreast in front. Two abreast in the rear. Eventually Sisko just stopped. When he stopped, they stopped.

"We are within the optimum range recommended," the Bajoran Security Captain politely, though firmly, apprised Sisko.

"Back it up," Sisko responded, his teeth clenched in a wide-mouth grin.

The Bajoran Captain thought about it. Eventually he gave his crew a nod in compliance with Sisko's wishes. In precision, they took their one step forward, one step back and one step to either side.

"Thank you," Sisko said. "It's called marching in time with the drummer, gentlemen. Marching in time with the drummer."

Rather than on his toes, Odo supposed, not that the Bajoran got it at all. That was all right. At less than ten meters from Quark's front door, Odo couldn't see the harm in him taking it from there. "I'll take it from here," he greeted Sisko, dismissing the Bajorans to mingle with their brethren.

"Make that thank _you,"_ Sisko accepted his reprieve with appreciation.

"Not at all," Odo walked him to and through the entranceway. "Like the dinner jacket. Gives it an air of formality rather than officialism."

"Doctor Bashir's idea." Sisko extended the credit where the credit was actually due with a nod for Dax, Worf, and various patrons pausing to take a curious look. "I agree. Perhaps it's just what we need. An air of formality. Dignity."

"Pomp and grandeur," Odo nodded. "He's here."

"Doctor Bashir?" 

"Also in formal dress uniform," Odo promised. "A bit flashier than yours."

Sisko smiled. "Yes. I was with him in his quarters. Not my style, Constable. Though on Bashir it does look good."

"Yes, well, I was with him in the shower," Odo grunted. "Not my style really either."

Sisko looked at him. Odo just nodded. "Private joke between Commander Dax and myself."

"If you insist," Sisko wasn't entirely certain he wanted to know the details.

Odo grunted again. "The Chief's also here. Five or so minutes. Formal dress as well. In a style more your own."

"Then I must be on time." Sisko's smile acknowledged a few more curious patrons entering to make their way through the yellow maze.

"Right on time. Must have something to do with that famed Federation timing."

"Which speaking of timing..?" Sisko encouraged. 

"On his way," Odo assured. "Have a minute?"

"Of course," Sisko kept his smile for the masses as they stepped aside. "What's wrong?"

"Potential for wrong. How's that? The immediate area between the bar proper and the gambling area has been cleared. Seating at the bar is limited as instructed."

"Yes. A bit of a round-about way, Constable, I admit…"

Odo wasn't complaining. "But it's the clearest path from the door to the stairs and on, rather than weaving your way. Understood. Martok's here. At the bar. He claimed his front row seat early. Currently he is sober, as currently he is lamenting the temporary loss of his bat'telh. Not to be presumptuous, I did request he check it at the door. A few friends of his are scattered in the dining area. Mostly towards the back."

"I'll speak to General Martok." Sisko nodded.

"Appreciated. For obvious reasons we will be having the Cardassian delegates enter through the second level. Weaving their way, but, well…"

"That's thoroughly acceptable, Constable," Sisko stopped him, more than satisfied with the reasons behind the change in plans.

"Thank you," Odo said. "Other than that you should know Dukat has skyrocketed to first place over the last hour. Don't let it go to your head, you're still close on his heels. Shakaar's dropped to fifth place behind Pfrann and Damar. Analysis is, while it's feasible word has yet gotten around about that heartfelt speech of Dukat's embracing the Bajoran-Cardassian war orphans -- "

"You're being facetious, Constable," Sisko verified.

"I am," Odo assured. "As it's reasonable to presume the general extremist public is now clear on who exactly is whom, and you're responsible for allowing Dukat to grace our doorstep. The question is, how do you want to respond?"

Sisko smiled, that time directly at him. "Sequester us, Constable. A decision I've planned to discuss with you and Legate Damar immediately after dinner."

"You've made my night," Odo applauded whether or not that decision constituted mutiny against the Federation's Supreme Assembly. "And well…" he ogled Sisko's formal uniform jacket. "At least you'll go out in style."

"So we will," Sisko pointed his finger with a wink, turning from Odo to make his way through the masses for the bar and Martok.

"That way," Odo directed him toward the so determined official passageway. 

"I know the way, Constable."

"I'm sure you do," Odo grunted. "Here's to hoping you know Martok as well."

"Come in!" Janice answered security pressing her door buzzer, settling for outlining her eyes with a healthy smudge of the dark green eye cream Garak had included in his inventory of her basic essentials. The long silk ties of her pale pink gown she just left dangling off her shoulders like floor-length epaulets. She wasn't quite sure what to do with them and they gave her something to do with her hands. The dress wasn't quite as modest as it had first appeared to be, though it maintained its simple air of elegance; hardly daring really at all. Merely extraordinarily clinging when she slipped it over her head. Pulling the thin straps up over her shoulders, the soft fluid A-line drape promptly molded itself to her shape, cloaking the outline of her chest, waist, hips, before falling into a sweeping gentle wave on down to her toes. 

Janice studied herself uncertainly one last time in her mirror. The dress was certainly very comfortable, almost as if she wasn't wearing anything at all. The soft pink color contributed to that illusion, blending the gown almost indistinguishable from her skin. "What do you think?" she turned around from the mirror with a grimace for her security escort of two; a Vulcan Captain and his Bajoran deputy.

The Bajoran was a religious man. Deeply. He was also extraordinarily conscious of his position in rank. He deferred answering Janice's reasonable question to his commander.

"Too much," Janice nodded, interpreting their silence and meaning her shadowed eyes. "Oh, well," she tossed the little case of eye creme onto the bed with a shrug, "it'll have to do."

"On the contrary," the Vulcan Captain found her self-criticism to be illogical, "your choice of colors is logical."

"Oh," Janice said. "Well, you should know that better than I do."

"Yes," the Vulcan agreed. "Are you ready to leave is our question of you."

"Am I late?" Janice blinked.

"No," he assured.

"Then I guess we better go before I am," she nodded. "Kira made me promise I'd be on time."

"That is also logical."

"Unless you're me." Janice headed for the door where her security escort of two turned into four more. Two in front, one on either side of her, the Vulcan Captain and his deputy in the rear as they walked down the corridor for the turbolift.

"Her choice of colors is logical?" the Bajoran had his limits. His Minister's Neutral representative to the conference was a strikingly attractive and shapely young Human. Smoldering in sensuality with her shadowed emerald green eyes and long, tousled mane of golden brown hair. His commander was Vulcan, not blind. His commander was lying to cover his own licentious thoughts.

His commander looked at him, disdainful and aloft as most Vulcans preferred to appear. The cool, stoic expression a close cousin to that of the Cardassian ice less the sarcasm. It inspired the Bajoran's will to challenge it. "What about the strings? Are those logical?"

The Vulcan studied the long cords trailing off the slender, bare shoulders of Doctor Janice Lange. "Their point appears to be one of decoration."

"They're untied," the Bajoran assured. "They're supposed to be tied."

"I can see the logic in fastening them, yes," the Vulcan agreed when they stepped into the lift and Doctor Lange promptly tripped attempting to maneuver in close quarters without stepping on the ties or the hem of her long gown.

"I forgot them?" Janice explained clutching her toe she had painfully whacked against someone's hard, unforgiving boot. "My shoes?"

"On the contrary," the Vulcan replied, "it is not your shoes I am questioning." Though, yes, now that she made reference to them, her flat, cloth slippers did seem somewhat out of place.

"Wrong," Janice shook her head. "They're comfortable…and see?" she straightened up to drop her gown down, covering up her feet. "You can't even see them so who cares what I have on my feet. Can you get any more logical then that?"

"It is doubtful," the Vulcan acknowledged. "Perhaps if you were to carry your cords."

"Or learn how to walk in a long dress?"

"Either is acceptable," the Vulcan was satisfied.

"Ah, Sisko!" Klingon General Martok rose from his stool to admire the Captain's choice of attire. "Nice. Very nice. Starfleet Command I have noticed has a distinct interest in not only ensuring their officers are men and women of caliber, but have flare. We Klingons, on the other hand, what do we care what we look like?" His one black eye glittered beneath his family's brow and heavy mane of blacker hair. The other eye lost in honorable battle with the Dominion's Jem'Hadar. In its place a mere flat covering of skin. He was a striking man, Martok, in his towering figure and his power, and he knew it. 

"I wouldn't go as far as saying that, General," Sisko shook his head at the General's armor plated breast. "To the contrary, the Klingon uniform has as much distinct flare to its design as any I have ever seen."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"It is meant as one."

"And draw your attention to this glass of ale in my hand," Martok nodded. "Do you see it?"

"I do," Sisko agreed.

"Good," Martok approved. "It is my missing bat'telh. As much a part of my uniform as its sleeves or its boots. Your Constable has 'appropriated it' as he puts it, from me. Something to do with the allowable _size _of accoutrements. Does this seems accurate to you?"

"Under the circumstances, General," Sisko said, "it does indeed."

"Hm," Martok said. "I'll remember that when I hear your screams. I envision a bomb. Here. There. It doesn't matter where. That is how these scoundrels operate, you know that as well as I. Dishonorable. Sly. Sending threats of death instead of killing you as a warrior should -- he has been in contact with his ship. Damar. Dukat. Who cares who. One or all of them. In turn, they have been sending transmissions to Cardassia. Two, we have detected. Are you aware of this?"

"Aware, General," Sisko said. "Expected. And allowed." he smiled. "I would no more think of prohibiting Legate Damar's contact with his bridge, or his home world than I would you."

"_I _am your friend," Martok reminded. "These are men of deceit we are dealing with. Everything I do, I do for you. Kira. Worf. Dax…This lovely creature here," he smiled for Quark's sensual Bajoran hostess Leeta in attendance at the bar. "Who would dream of harming a hair of this child's head? I cannot fathom it."

"I'm glad you mentioned that, General," Sisko agreed.

"Someone has?" Martok's dramatic intake of breath was sharp. His eye piercing, his hand clutching the kut'luch strapped to his waist. "Who? Tell me now."

"How everything you do, you do for me," Sisko nodded. "Will you be having dinner?"

"Yes," Martok dismissed. "An hour or so. I have some friends I am waiting for -- why?" his eye searched Sisko. "Are you inviting me to join you and Dukat?"

He said Dukat and he meant Dukat. The power of Damar continuing to be less than nothing to the Klingon Empire. Sisko refrained from correcting the General, turning to Leeta. "Do you think it's possible General Martok's table can be made ready now? I believe his friends have arrived and are waiting -- in the back." he stressed for Leeta's complete understanding.

"Oh, I'm sure it can be, Captain, if that's what you want," she smiled, a clever crafting of words and child-like innocence to her voice and on her face. If Sisko never thought twice about this woman in the six years of his command, he thought about her now and appreciated her.

"It is. Thank you."

"My pleasure," Leeta scooted around the bar to take Martok's ale for him and tuck her hand under his arm. 

"You can be a difficult man, Sisko," Martok turned away with Leeta. "Stubborn."

"I can be, General," Sisko acknowledged. "Yes, I can be."

Legate Damar lacked the showmanship of his predecessor Dukat. A scowl on his broad Cardassian face as he stalked in tune with his small staff and their security escort for the turbolift. Little did he know how that scowl was destined to be permanently erased long before the first tantalizing bite of his waiting dinner. There was an inner calm to the Bajoran Maquis terrorist Hawk under guise of Damar's security Captain as he walked alongside the Emperor. There was always an inner calm to Hawk. His path and conscience clear. Not so could he say the same for the conscience of his elder brother Anar who turned his back on their fight in his middle years, reaching and embracing the Neutral Janice Lange calling her daughter, as he reached and embraced the sons of Dukat calling them friends.

Not so could Hawk say the same for the conscience of his brother's namesake and nephew First Minister Shakaar Adon of Bajor. Shakaar as guilty as Anar; one a politician, the other a fool.

"What's this?" Damar halted Hawk immediately when his escort divided into two groups. Three who entered the turbolift along with Damar and his assistant Paq, Dukat and his brother Pfrann. Four who remained behind in the corridor. "A change of guard, now?"

"Relax, Legate," Hawk replied. "There are a lot more of us waiting for you on the Promenade -- level two." he instructed the computer; the door to the turbolift closing.

"Level two?" Damar's scowl narrowed into a glare.

"The delegations are being divided between two entranceways, Legate," some supernumerary began.

Damar silenced him. "Oh, really? Halt program…I said halt it!" his weight pressed Hawk back against the wall of the lift. "Before I give you a reason to use that thing."

"Halt program," Hawk rolled his eyes, activating his com badge as the lift halted. "Security to Constable Odo…"

The roll of eyes was matched by Odo's when the call over his com badge identified itself as belonging to the Cardassian Security squad.

__

"Sorry, Constable," the Security Captain's calm voice apologized, _"Legate Damar is expressing some concern over the change in his entrance."_

"Is he," Odo grunted.

__

"He is!" Damar's snarl overlapped the Captain's answer. _"You have already changed my guard rotation without bothering to inform me."_

"Yes, well," Odo drawled, "barring getting into duty rotations, I will say whatever your concern, apparently you don't mind locking yourself up in a turbolift with my task force -- armed task force," he added. "Heavily. I'm sure you've noticed." He heard a snicker at that point. Muffled, it sounded young. Probably belonging to one of the Dukats.

__

"Is_ that some sort of threat, Constable?"_ the edge in Damar's voice was increasing. Needlessly. Odo took notice of Leeta positioning herself to escort Martok away from his station at the bar and so his Legate was in luck.

"Reassurance," Odo grunted. "If you insist you may enter Quark's on the main level. Understood, Captain?"

__

"It is understood, Constable," the Captain assured.

"Very good," Odo nodded. "See you when you get here." In just about a minute. Kira just about twenty seconds behind Damar. Garak just about twenty seconds behind her. Lange just about twenty seconds behind him. From there everything promptly and quickly proceeded to go downhill at an incredible increasing rate of speed.

CHAPTER TWO

Time: _5…4…3…2…1…_

"Why don't you just _sit_ on the railing?" O'Brien surrendered finally. Tired of watching Bashir wander back and forth across the dining platform.

"What?" Bashir said like he had air in his head instead all thosesuperior nodes.

"The railing!" O'Brien jumped up the table from where he sat feeling constricted in his dress uniform about as comfortable as a straight jacket. "The railing," his hand gestured wildly. "Why don't you just sit on the railing where you can see everything? The whole place." From top to bottom. Floor to ceiling. Wall to wall.

"Why would I want to do that?" Bashir sat down at one of the smaller cocktail tables positioned to side of the main dining table where the Chief preferred to wait hulking over his water, twiddling his thumbs.

"I don't know," O'Brien agreed. "I'm just asking. Like you. I'm just asking."

"Well, I was just asking," Bashir picked up his water glass with a shrug. "Isn't any harm in asking, or for that matter in what I asked."

"I didn't say there was any _harm,_" O'Brien assured.

"No. Merely the way I said it."

"Exactly," O'Brien pointed. "Precisely. _On the nose!"_

Bashir nodded. "Of course what I said was you're in formal dress. That's what I said. No intonation. Insinuation. Accusation. _Double entendre _intended." He stood up to yes, _look _over the railing of the dining area at all the other dining areas around him, below him and above. "Of course now I'm saying…" he agreed, continuing to stand there and take in the view which was lovely, yes, it really was. All those mirrored and muted multi-colored opaque glass panels encasing the numerous dining tiers of Quark's restaurant portion of his Ferengi bar and entertainment palace. Really quite romantic if one wished it to be. Certainly quite elegant if one wished it to be. Bashir wished for it to be both. He was dressed for the occasion for it to be both in his knee length formal dinner coat and perfectly creased trousers. A somewhat striking opposite to the Chief's rather ill-fitting jacket. Somewhat. Bashir chuckled to himself. A clearly striking opposite was far more like it. "Apparently I struck some sort of chord."

"No," O'Brien was behind him tapping on his shoulder. "No, _you_ said, and I quote 'Oh.' Pause. 'You're in formal dress.' Like I'm not allowed. Like I committed some -- "

"Sin," Bashir turned around.

"What?" O'Brien said,

"Or crime," Bashir nodded. "Those aren't my words, they're yours."

"No, they're yours," O'Brien assured.

"What I insinuated, yes. What I alluded to. Of course, I'm telling you quite plainly now it's your own conscience that's troubling you, not me. Guilty conscience, I might add. Good." Bashir left the rail and her view to sit back down at the cocktail table. His arms comfortable and casually resting on his thighs, his hands clasped in front of him, open, ready and willing to talk. "Because I also don't mind telling you I disagree that our friendship somehow negates the friendship I also share with Keiko."

"Friendship," O'Brien scoffed. "You kill her damn plants on her every time she leaves and I'm the one who has to run around like a madman trying to replace them for her so that I don't have to hear it. That's it. That is the extent of your friendship with my wife."

Bashir let that much slide. "What I'll say instead is, in my opinion when a man has a disagreement with his wife that upsets him to the extent that it is clearly upsetting you, what that man does is seek out a friend. Someone to discuss it with. Someone to just simply sit there and listen, allowing him to sound off. What that man does not do is sidle up to the first attractive young woman he sees in an effort to infuse his manhood and make himself feel important again. Which is exactly what you are doing. For whatever reason you don't feel important. You feel neglected. Taken for granted. The offer stands. If you want to discuss it, we will discuss it. If you want to just talk, talk."

"Uh, huh," O'Brien said. "Talk. We'll talk."

"Yes," Bashir nodded.

"You can't talk to you," O'Brien snapped. "You can't get a word in edgewise with you."

"I'm sorry you feel that way," Bashir straightened up with a reach for his water glass.

"Well, I do feel that way," O'Brien assured. "That's exactly the way I feel -- and a few other people, too. Dax, all right? Go ahead and ask her. Garak. Ask him."

"I will," Bashir said.

"Good! Because you're not superior, what you are is thick. Your _attitude_ is superior, but bottom line, what you are is thick. _You_ look_. You _decide_. _You could move heaven and earth trying to get you to see it differently, but it will never happen. Never._ So, I'm not even going to bother to try_," he loomed over the table in emphasis of his already emphasized words. _"That's_ the attitude you hear coming out of my mouth. That's it in a nutshell. None of this crap about 'infusing my manhood'. I don't have to infuse anything. The left foot's not in the grave, and neither is the right one. And it'll be a long time before either of them are. _A long time!_"

"I also think," Bashir replied, "that as a friend to me, you should step aside."

"Come again? _I_ should step aside?"

"From Janice, yes. You are aware of my own interest. I have expressed it to you."

"Baloney!" O'Brien sneered. "What you've expressed is I came, I saw, I conquered. That's it. Everybody else out of the way. _I_ came. _I saw._ _I _conquered. Well, what if I don't feel like it? What if I just don't feel like it?"

"Chief," Bashir sighed, "I shouldn't have to be in competition with you. I can't believe we're even having this conversation. I really can't. I'm sorry, but I can't."

"Because I'm married," O'Brien nodded. "I'm old. Over the hill. Trust me, it's _engraved_. Well, now it's your turn. _You are_ in competition_._ Got that? _You are._ I don't care how much you _think_ you shouldn't be. I don't care how _shocked_ you are_. _How much you or anyone else would ever _DREAM! _You are." He turned for the dining table to find his water glass and perched against the railing where he could take in a large portion of the view.

"Well, I'm glad we've have this little talk," Bashir decided. "Yes, I am glad. Quite glad. At least now everything is clear. We're clear. Clear in our understanding of one another and our positions and that's a start. A very good start. Yes, a very good start…"

"What are you doing?" O'Brien groaned when Bashir joined him in perching on the rail, water glass in hand.

"Me?" Bashir smiled. "I'm doing what you're doing. It was your suggestion I sit on the railing and I'm just taking you up on it…What I wouldn't suggest, of course," he mentioned with a look around as well as down, "is either of us attempt to push each other off. Not only would that be extremely childish, we could quite accidentally kill one another."

"Is that what you think I'm thinking?" O'Brien snorted.

"Is it what you're thinking?" Bashir asked.

"No!"

"Doesn't hurt to make sure," Bashir winked. "After all, when a person starts acting out of what is normal character for them, there really isn't any telling…" Water from the Chief's glass sloshed onto the front of Bashir's jacket, obviously because the Chief tossed it at him. "Just how far he'll go." Bashir finished.

"That's what I was thinking," O'Brien nodded.

A frightfully dirty trick, at that. Completely unfair timing on the Chief's part. What with Captain Sisko's appearance just then at the top of the stairs, stymieing any retaliation from Bashir unless Bashir didn't mind having to explain why he was throwing water on the Chief. Which, yes, obviously he would mind having to explain as much as the Captain would mind having to ask. Therefore Bashir resisted his instinctive reactionary urges and did not succumb to dowsing the Chief. Making himself, in his eyes, the better of the two men.

The Captain's eyes saw something entirely different. He saw the Chief perched up against the railing, both feet on the floor, and he saw his Doctor Bashir perched on the railing, both feet off the floor. The already rapidly drying water on Bashir's jacket he didn't really notice until Bashir brought his attention to it.

"Gentlemen…" Sisko regarded the two members of his senior staff, one of them in particular with a cautious nod of his head.

"Yes," Bashir smiled. "That infamous hole in one's lip."

"Yes…" Sisko agreed. Now that Bashir mentioned it he did notice how the front of Bashir jacket appeared to be slightly damp in spots. "Perhaps if you tried sitting -- in a chair?" he indicated the several chairs available for that specific purpose.

"Oh, yes, sorry," Bashir hopped down off the rail for the nearby cocktail table. "This all right?"

"Any will do, Doctor."

"Actually," Bashir explained as he sat, "the Chief was just pointing out to me -- this really is a very strategic location, isn't it? You can see quite the vast area -- if not the majority of the entire bar. I suspect that was the reason behind choosing this particular section?"

"That would be a contributing factor, yes," Sisko settled at the head of the dining table.

"I've often wondered that," Bashir nodded. "Just because you can see someone does it necessarily mean they can see you? And vice versa, naturally. Because you can't see someone, does that mean they can't see you?"

"I…" Sisko said, uncertain as to what Bashir was actually talking about. 

"Which is nothing," O'Brien scoffed.

Sisko had his suspicions the Chief was probably correct, however he was kinder about it. More diplomatic in his answer. "I would think, Doctor, the answer would vary depending about the circumstances."

"From position to range of vision," O'Brien assured. "What are you saying now? My eyesight is failing?"

"What?" Bashir said. "No, of course I'm not saying that."

"Yeah, right," O'Brien snorted. "Get over here. Just, get over here! Excuse us," he apologized to Sisko.

"Not at all," Sisko waved his permission. "Just don't, Doctor, if you wouldn't mind..?"

"The rail, you mean? No, I won't sit on the rail…" Bashir pried himself loose of the Chief tugging on his arm. "I'm here. Yes, all right, I'm here. What?"

"Who's that who just came in?" O'Brien insisted.

"Well, I'm not so sure either of us should really be pointing either," Bashir pushed O'Brien hand down. "But, yes, fine. Damar, I suspect you mean?"

Sisko's glass paused at his lips. "Damar?" 

"And Dukat," Bashir nodded as Sisko turned around to look over his shoulder before looking up to the upper levels and what should be the Emperor's entrance. "Relatively easy to spot. The uniform's a dead giveaway, even if you can't see the face. I'm not aware of any other Cardassian visitors -- is something wrong?"

"I'm not sure," Sisko rose to have a look of the rail in the direction of Damar and his group crossing the bar area. He activated his com badge. "Sisko to Constable Odo."

__

"You beat me to it," Odo answered, clear on what the question was before it was asked. _"His Emperor refused to exit the turbolift on the second level claiming to be unnerved as it was by the change of guard…"_

"Yes, all right," Sisko nodded.

__

"My thought, being as Martok was apparently unable to resist your charms. The other choice, obviously, was to leave him in the lift until he agreed."

"Everything all right?" Bashir asked when the Captain signed off.

"Yes, everything is fine, Doctor."

"Excellent," Bashir resumed picking heads out of the crowd with the Chief. "All right let's see…who's that entering now? Right now…"

"Kira," O'Brien assured. "I see her, all right? I see her."

"And I see Garak," Bashir agreed. "So, no, I haven't the faintest idea what point you are trying to make. I was merely making the observation are we necessarily as exposed to everyone in the way everyone is exposed to us because if we are, we are exposed..." He stared out over the rail at who had to clearly be Doctor Janice Lange entering with her escort of security.

"We do it with mirrors, Doctor," Sisko answered from his seat. "It's all done with mirrors."

"A vision?" Bashir looked back at the Chief finally.

"You can say that again," O'Brien whistled low. "You can say that again."

Sisko glanced up at the mirror suspended at one o'clock.

"Ah, Major!" Garak galloped his way to catching up with Kira.

"Garak," Kira ignored him for Dax. "Lange here yet?"

"Thirty seconds maybe?" Dax smiled.

"Good," Kira nodded. "Mind if I..?"

"Wait? Not at all." Dax dismissed Kira's escort to assume guard duty along the walls with the rest of the assortment of traveling companions.

"Thank you," Kira said with a second nod for Odo, Worf.

"Major," Garak patiently waited his turn, beaming his brightest smile in her face when she finally turned around to him.

"You look like a veteran." Kira resolved something that was apparently troubling her.

"I am a veteran, Major," Garak agreed. "However, if you mean the suit, my suit." Which, yes, obviously, she had to mean his version of a knee length dinner jacket, breasted to one side and of a muted green-gray color, most complimentary to his flesh-tone. "I can assure you, while perhaps inspired by Starfleet's dress uniform, it is distinctly civilian in its origin and subsequent design."

"How can it be both?" Kira disputed. 

"You would be surprised, Major. You would be surprised."

"Whatever," Kira waved. "What do you want?"

"Oh. Well, other than to say how I had heard a rumor how this evening's affair was to be formal…" he chanced a discrete look over Kira's comfortably worn red jumpsuit. "One confirmed as I watched Julian pass my shop…as well as Chief O'Brien… General Martok with his bat'telh…and, no, Major, apparently not something conveyed to you. I wouldn't be concerned however."

"I'm not concerned," Kira assured.

"No," Garak smiled, "I wouldn't have thought so. Elsewise, I did just want to let you know, I have completed Doctor Lange's list of essentials -- I do hope to your satisfaction. Naturally, if you have any questions, suggestions, or complaints I will only be too happy to see what I can do to resolve the matter -- "

"Wait a minute, wait a minute," Kira was stopping him. "What were all those _essentials_ this morning? What were those?"

"The barest, Major," Garak took a startled step back from her. "Simply the barest. I thought -- well, yes, I am positive I conveyed that to you."

Much like he conveyed his long and floating pink dress was not a dress but a nightgown. If that was true, Lange was wearing a nightgown. If it was false, she was wearing a dress. Either way Kira's face contorted in disgust of Garak and his creation upon Lange's surprising change in appearance upon her appearance in the entranceway of Quark's.

"I thought you said it was nightgown?" the back of Kira's hand whacked Garak in the chest, restarting his heart, paused to take in the view worthy of most people's attention.

Reasonable. To Lange's credit, under that dizzying head of hair was a brain reputed to rival Bashir's. Under that pale pink gown was a body clearly rivaling many. It all made sense to Odo.

"Commander," Odo brought Dax's attention not to Lange, or to Worf kicking over General Martok's bat'telh, but to the crowd starting to get a little too thick as they lingered in deciding if they were staying, leaving or coming in or what they were doing. The parade of diplomats just a little too interesting not to incur most people's curiosity. 

"Yes," Dax turned from frowning in her own curiosity after Lange to assist in crowd control duty. As did Mister Worf turned from his observation of Lange to assist upon Dax's caustic cue. "We know. Glorious."

"Garak!" Kira insisted heatedly.

"Oh, but, Major," Garak breathed in incredulous horrified disbelief, "it is a nightgown."

"What?" Kira had him by his banded collar choking the life out of him.

"Clearly an inadvertent error on Doctor Lange's part!" Garak hastily swore by her Prophets. "Yes, that's very true. Understandable. Reasonable, even. The two -- shall we say more formal ensembles are quite similar to each other. Granted, one is a dress and the other is a nightgown. One may be cut to just above the knee, to where the other is quite clearly a floor length gown.

"One may have the subtlest version of a capped sleeve, where the other has mere straps. But they are remarkable in their similarity, Major, I insist. Their fabric…Color… And, of course, their general style. I do, as I have explained, like to keep the personalities of my clientele in mind at all times."

"Oh, for goodness sake!" Kira shoved him away from her. "I can't let her walk around in a nightgown!"

"It does offer a new and interesting meaning to the term evening wear, doesn't it?" Garak agreed.

"What?" Kira's growl was wet with saliva.

"Of course you can't," Garak purred soothingly. "Of course you can't -- nor I. I do think, however, Major, there are ways of conveying Doctor Lange's error to her without causing any undue or needless embarrassment."

"Embarrassment?" Kira choked. "I am quite capable of telling Lange or anyone else they're walking around in their underwear without any help from you!" 

"Humiliation, Major," Garak nodded. "I really do believe it should be I to assume the responsibility of alerting Doctor Lange -- "

"No!" 

"While you, Major," he nodded, "take a moment to inform Captain Sisko as why Doctor Lange will be just a few minutes late."

"She's already here!"

"In returning," Garak concluded. "She has to leave, Major. Unless, of course, your only interest is in informing her?"

"No, of course that isn't my only interest!" 

"Well then?"

"All right, fine," Kira ran her fingers through her cropped red hair. "Fine. You get Lange. I'll tell Sisko…But, Garak, so help me," she had him and his collar gnarled in her claws again. "If you ever! Ever! Pull another stunt like this!"

"It's not a stunt, Major," Garak promised. "It's not a stunt." He took off on a fast trot after Lange while Kira turned to cut through the entertainment area on a shortened path to Sisko above.

"Wait a minute, wait a minute," Cardassia's Gul Anon Dukat, eldest son to the murderous cutthroat Dukat, muttered to his younger brother Pfrann as they crossed the bar area for the first of several staircases, lagging behind Damar and his Mister Paq by several steps. "Don't run. What are you running for? I don't see Janice. She said when I see the Vulcan, I will see her, and I don't see any Vulcan -- " Yes, he did. Just then. Coming through the entrance. The height of his head clearing about half of the milling crowd beginning to gather.

"All right, go, go," Anon urged his brother stalling on the first level of stairs to keep moving up so that he could dally as long as possible watching Janice move towards him like a vision, yes. His vision, no one else's. His wife. Or she would be less than two short weeks from then when they returned to Cardassia together. Damar's idiot conference, their six month separation behind them. _I love you._ His mind strove to tell hers, wishing they were both telepathic. The reflection of the twirling overhead lights dancing like sparks through his glassy red eyes watching her. Janice felt her cheeks growing warm and pink under his penetrating scrutiny. Her head dipped slightly with a light smile of lingering shyness. He was so powerful. Not only his arms, but his presence. An uncharacteristic flicker of mild curiosity crossed the Vulcan Captain's eyes with a glance from the tipped head of the Neutral Bajoran representative Lange toward the broad and muscular young Cardassian poised on the stairs. 

"Kira…" Dax caught up with Kira at the Dabo table.

"All right, fine," Kira halted with an exasperated turn on her heel. "I'll go around the other way."

"No, it's all right. That isn't what I was going to say…ask," Dax bent her head in whispered confidence. "Isn't Lange wearing the nightgown? I thought we had decided the shorter one was the dress?"

"Yes," Kira nodded. "Yes, Lange is wearing a nightgown." 

Dax digested that. "Well, if it's of any consolation, we really weren't too sure ourselves?"

"No," Kira agreed how they hadn't been. It just had never occurred to her to point out the potential danger of making the same mistake to Lange.

"I'll tell Benjamin you'll be a little late," Dax volunteered.

"Fine," Kira waved. "Fine. You tell Benjamin, I'll get Lange." she turned to cut her way back across the entertainment area.

Dax turned to continue on, taking one step when she realized something appeared to be very wrong about a trio of Bajoran Special Forces officers moving swiftly past the gambling tables ahead of her. "Captain…" she called, not knowing the officer's name. He turned around, looking for the voice. Dax took another step and he spotted her, a smile on his face as his phaser rifle came up fixed, and aimed. Dax stared for a split second before she reacted with a scream for "BENJAMIN!" and dove for the floor.

"I didn't say scream it," Kira halted to whirl around in time to see the first of the wide beams spraying across the gambling area. "Oh, my God…WORF!"

Dax came out of her dive up onto her knees and fired. The stunning blast from her phaser rifle caught the officer dead in the center of his chest, lifting him off his feet and sending him backward on top of the tables behind him. "Get down!" her hard shove sent Kira reeling into the Dabo wheel as the bar erupted into panic. 

CHAPTER THREE

"Legate," Sisko respectfully stood up with the appearance of Damar and his assistant Mister Paq.

"They're coming," Damar stalked heavily across the floor of the dining area, Paq on his heels. "Down there somewhere…_weaving_ their way along. If I didn't know you better, I'd say it was a Federation _scheme_."

"You have me at a disadvantage, Legate," Sisko admitted.

"Lange," Damar picked up his glass. "Is this it? Water?"

"No, hardly," Sisko reassured. "Wine, kanar…whatever you prefer. Quark will be along in a moment…I'm sorry you were saying something about Doctor Lange…"

Dax's terrorized scream for him pierced the distance a microsecond ahead of the searing blasts of phaser fire ripping through the crowded levels of Quark's restaurant.

"DOWN!" Sisko tackled Damar, bringing the Legate down onto the floor with him.

"Doctor Lange!" Garak moved up quickly through the ranks of Janice's security escort preparing to fade away now that their duty was complete in seeing her safely across the short area of the bar.

"Oh, I just love your dress!" Leeta's gushing squeal cut Garak off at the foot at the stairs to clamor up after Janice, seizing her by her trailing cords and spinning her around. "I do! Is it one of Garak's? Garak!" she hollered out into the air. "Is this one of yours?" 

"Astounding." Garak regained his balance to gaze up at the exquisite splendor of the young doctor Lange with the unblinking green eyes staring down over the rail at him; so utterly oblivious to her own beauty and therefore herself.

"You can say that again." The tray eventually stopped rattling in Quark's hands. "Water. Somebody get me some water. Prune juice. Fish juice. I don't care what juice. Will somebody just get me something."

"Um…yup, okay," Rom picked a glass of water up off the tray. "Here's some water."

The tray hit the floor with a crash. "Thanks," Quark took a drink. "I needed that."

"Too much?" Janice sought Garak's opinion of her eye creme.

"My dear," Garak breathed, "if you only knew."

"Don't pay any attention to him -- any of them," Leeta spun Janice back to her with a quick glare for Dukat dallying two steps ahead on them on the stairs. "What does he know? They're perfect…maybe just a little smudge here in the corner…"

Dax's shout across the room for Sisko was lost to the sudden shrieking heat of phaser fire raining down on them from above.

"JUMP!" Anon screamed at his brother a level ahead of him with a lunge for Janice, his powerful shove sending her and Leeta sprawling back down the stairs.

"He pushed her down the stairs." Quark stood there paralyzed clutching his water. "He pushed her down the stairs. HE PUSHED HER DOWN THE STAIRS! And if that isn't enough!"

"Anon!" Pfrann was over the side of the platform rail and down on top of the screaming crowd pouring into the one cleared area, fighting his way through the stampede to get to his brother.

"I'm all right. Help Sisko!" Anon was over the side of the staircase, down on the floor and up on his knees, clawing and crawling his way out from under the broken, burned bodies and debris fallen from above to get to Janice lying at the foot of the stairs.

"You bastard!" Leeta attacked him.

"Get out of the way," his vicious strike sent her flying, still cursing him in Bajoran as she landed over the back of an overturned chair.

"Anon…" Janice felt his hands pulling her away from staring into the lifeless charred face of her Vulcan Captain staring back at her.

"Don't look at him," he kissed her hair and cheek, his voice reassuring, his arms tight and comforting around her. "It's all right. Don't look at any of them. Talk to me. Are you all right?"

"I think so yes…" she clung to him.

"Good. I want you…" he sized up their immediate surroundings that included a silent, frozen picture of Leeta posed with a dinner knife in her hand framed against a backdrop of screaming patrons and security grid-locked; Red Alert blaring above the deafening turmoil. 

"Really…" Garak flattened himself against the staircase, staring at the wave of yellow uniforms descending on the bar from every conceivable direction.

"Yamok sauce," Quark nodded from somewhere at his feet, under the stairwell. "Tell me that's yamok sauce."

"No…" Garak stared up at the dangling, torn body of some woman draped over the railing above them. "No, that isn't yamok sauce…"

"I hate Friday nights," Quark sighed.

"It's Monday."

"Those, too." Quark assured. 

"Oh, yes…" Garak's stare nodded down on Gul Dukat apologizing to Doctor Lange crumbled at the foot of the stairs.

"He pushed her," Quark reminded.

"Oh, yes…" Garak agreed. "Yes, that's very true he did…Explains why he's kissing her now."

"Ow!" Quark hit his head on the step. "Give me that stupid thing!" he groped for his tray.

"Get her to the bar," Anon instructed Leeta. "Understand me? I want you to get her to the bar."

"Uh, huh," Quark's face appeared wearing some serving tray like a hat. "That much I got. It's the how I'm having a little trouble with."

"Crawl if you have to!" Anon's fist struck the tray; his point vibrating through Quark's four lobes.

"Um, yup, okay, we'll do that," Rom pulled the knife of Leeta's hand, tossing it aside.

"Rom!" Leeta snapped alive.

"It was a dinner knife?"

"I know it was a dinner knife! Never mind!" she seized Janice by the arm with a promise to Anon. "We've got her."

"Oh, but…" Janice protested.

"He'll be all right," Leeta assured.

"Famous last words," Quark nodded at the yellow pants legs breaking through the wall of people. "Friend or foe?"

"I would say…" Garak stared from the phaser rifles aimed, to the faces of Anar's treasonous sergeant Dak'jar and Hawk's deputy Assura, to the bottle in Morn's hand bouncing off the top of the deputy's skull.

"Why take chances, you're right," Quark agreed.

"True," Garak exhaled as Morn's strike proved sufficient in distracting the second security officer long enough for Doctor Lange to scream and Leeta to react in an attempt to disarm him before the first Bajoran could collect his wits.

"_Leeta?"_ Quark said.

"Well…" Garak grimaced, not meaning to say Dukat did not react because he did.

"Get the rifle!" Leeta screamed, riding the officer's back bucking like a horse as he vainly tried to pry her off of him.

Anon had the rifle, ripping the Bajoran's cheek open as he smashed it across his face.

"Thanks a lot!" Leeta snapped as the officer staggered and dropped out from under her.

"Now, get her to the bar," Anon tossed the phaser rifle to Garak, feeling something like a punch in his stomach when he bent to retrieve the other one from the hand of the first officer. He stared for a moment at the smiling Bajoran and then down at the hilt of one of Quark's dinner knives protruding from his lower abdomen.

"Anon!" Janice gasped with a grab for him as he straightened up.

"Yamok sauce?" Quark swallowed at the blood starting to bubble out from around the handle.

"No…" Garak stared. "No, that wouldn't be yamok sauce either…"

The Bajoran jumped up with a laugh and a reach for his phaser rifle meeting Morn's fist coming down like a hammer on his head. 

"Now let's see you get up," Leeta patted Morn's shoulder satisfied with a worried look over Anon and encouraging shove of Rom. "Run and get Julian."

"Um…" Rom stared into the sea of bedlam. "Yup, okay, I'll get Julian."

"Intruder alert!" Sisko's fist struck his com badge. "Override Security protocol Alpha, Beta Zed, Sisko, Captain, Benjamin. Full riot squad, ladies and gentlemen. Make it damn quick -- Stay down!" he barked at Damar lifting his head up off the floor to eye his fallen assistant.

"Oh, please, Captain," Damar insisted. "I think I know -- "

"I said, down!" Sisko yanked him back down by the scruff of his collar. "Bashir? Chief?"

"Right here…" Bashir stared over the edge of the platform at the scene of utter pandemonium. Two thousand people trampling and killing each other and themselves as they jumped from the upper levels of the bar in a desperate attempt to get out of the way of the raging blasts of phaser fire. "DON'T PANIC! FOR GOD'S SAKE, DON'T PANIC!" he screamed helplessly, feeling his shaking hand hit his com badge. "Medical emergency -- Doctor Bashir. Full medical detail now -- Quark's bar -- on the double… combat situation. Repeat, combat situation…" the Chief's hand covered his mouth with a shake of his head.

"In a word," Sisko agreed from behind the overturned dining table. "Chief?"

"Here…" O'Brien answered quietly. "You've got two of them on the platform directly behind you….Your guess is as good as mine."

"Understood…" Sisko said.

"And a rifle waiting about half way down the stairs -- which way you want it? Patience was never a virtue of mine."

"Nor mine." Sisko was up like he was fired out a torpedo launcher and diving into a somersault down the stairs.

"Captain!" he heard someone call as he landed with a thud on his back at the bottom of the steps slick with blood, his hand closed tightly over the rifle.

"Wait a minute!" the Chief was stopping him as he came up the stairs three at a time. One of the 'bastards' on the dining platform behind them was swinging over an extra phaser rifle. O'Brien caught the bouquet a finger's reach ahead of Damar with a wink for Sisko. "Good thing you didn't come up firing."

"Yes," Sisko nodded with a deep breath. "Anymore?"

Sisko's expected question was inconvenient. The Bajoran Special Force's officer on the platform was Anar. The officer with him, his son Sian. Anar should thank the Prophets the commotion his brother Hawk caused had everyone far too busy to notice the face of Shakaar Adon appearing on the scene dressed in the yellow uniform of his Special Forces. Anar would thank the Prophets later when he prayed for their assistance in cultivating leniency. A request that at the moment seemed so outrageously absurd. Anar's eyes were on Damar feeling the Federation phaser rifle in his hands. The Cardassian Emperor disgusted and bored, no more emotional or feeling than that for the carnage surrounding him. Anar's thoughts should be on Sisko and his Chief Engineer O'Brien stunned by the brutality of the terrorist attack, their minds and eyes would soon clear well enough to realize that was the face of Shakaar Adon looking across at them. Fifteen years older. The hair white. The body slender and tight with muscles, the skin deeply tanned.

Young Doctor Julian Bashir on the other hand was stunned to utter silence, a nervous shake to his hand pushing his hair back off his forehead as he remained staring down on the building mayhem below them.

"No…" Anar looked away to briefly scan his area in response to Sisko's question. "Don't worry. We'll help cover you."

"It would be appreciated -- Next one's yours," Sisko promised Damar. "Bashir, see if there's anything we can do for Mister Paq…"

"Right…"

"Which one is that?" Anar asked Sisko to repeat, his tone benign, his son attempting to keep the expression on his face as neutral as his father's voice. Though the victim of Hawk's attack was clearly not Janice, but Cardassian, the uniform and body so badly burned he couldn't tell if it was Anon or Pfrann or who it was other than not his Emperor Damar.

"Was," Bashir replied. "Who this was, was Mister Paq." he stood up. "If you're wondering just how do we know the bad from the good -- they'll be the one's using disruptor force. This is murder. This is sheer, unadulterated murder."

O'Brien glanced at his rifle. "Heavy stun."

"Same here," Sisko activated his com badge. "Sisko to Constable Odo…Odo, can you read me?"

__

"I read you," Odo answered. _"We're here…Major Kira. Dax…Martok." _There was a definite pause. _"Haven't seen Mister Worf…You've got a mess out on the Promenade as well."_

"Understood. All Special Forces security personnel are to be disarmed immediately -- Chief, take their rifles. A precaution, gentlemen," Sisko explained to the two officers. "I'm sure you understand, and we may as well begin with you."

"No explanation necessary, Captain," Anar obligingly tossed his rifle across, reaching for his son's next to him. "How Cardassian of you and your Federation as always to bite the hand that feeds you…"

"Setting _ten_…" O'Brien gaped at the phaser rifle he caught.

"What?" All Sisko saw as he grabbed for the rifle was a blinding flash from the Bajoran's disruptor striking the steps. When he looked up he realized he was on the floor of the gambling area, the dining platform all but destroyed. Her connecting series of staircases vaporized by the power of the penetrating force.

"You were saying something about wanting to get down?" the voice sounded familiar; it wasn't the Chief.

"That wasn't a ten," O'Brien straightened his back with a shake of his head. "Maybe a seven. Not even an eight. If it was a ten the damn bar wouldn't be here."

"Ten!" Damar slammed the phaser rifle under his nose.

"He was just trying to make a point," O'Brien grinned up at Bashir hanging by his fingernails from the last square inches left. "Come on. Jump. You're halfway there."

"And it's been received loud and clear!" Sisko's bloodied hand groped for the Chief's shirt.

"You okay?" 

"Never better!" his fist borrowed the Chief's com badge. "Sisko to Constable Odo!"

__

"Odo here."

"Drop them in their damn tracks! I want those men disarmed now. Get him down." He aimed the Chief towards Bashir, yanking the phaser rifle away from Damar. "No offense, Legate, but I know I won't use it."

"That's what you'd like to think." Damar picked up one of the others with a scoff. "Level three -- care to check?"

"I would indeed," Sisko assured. The safety-interlock was standard at level three. Sisko could feel the rebounding energy of his rage in his hand gripping the rifle. Its owner was either among the dead or the dying. There were thirty bodies, only two of them Special Forces security personnel, scattered in the immediate area, abandoned and eerily silent in contrast to the crushing mob a hundred yards away. The hail of phaser fire already slowing to detectable pockets of activity. Personal, individualized wars between the men and women dressed in yellow as their look-alike intruders found their positions momentarily exposed by the flight of the terrorized patrons. Either way the enemy had a guaranteed way out. Voluntarily or otherwise swept away into the shelter of the maddened crowd where in a wink of an eye they could turn from terrorist back into Federation or Bajoran Special Forces Security. It was going to be next to impossible to prove exactly who was whom unless the man or woman was caught with the phaser rifle in hand.

And even then. Sisko gripped the power to move heaven and earth in his right hand.

"Make that a massacre. I don't care if it's ten or ten hundred, it's a massacre just the same." Bashir was breathing heavily from his voluntary jump the equivalency of three stories as he ran his medical tricorder over Sisko right temporal bone. "Superficial laceration -- you'll be fine. Same as that hand. Couple of fractured knuckles, nothing more -- mind?"

"Not at all, Doctor," Sisko waved him onto the battlefield while he headed for that crowd impeding their own exit along with the much needed entrance of station security and medical personnel. Those people trying to work their way down through Quark's disrupted catwalks of stairs and platforms and landings weren't all security officers, some of them were doctors and nurses.

Dax listened to Benjamin's order for immediate assistance from the station's standard security force over Odo's com badge trying not to pay attention to the comment they hadn't seen Worf since the first few seconds of the attack; minutes ago now that seemed like hours.

"How's the ankle?" she verified with Kira lying next to her behind their hastily assembled barricade of two tables and a chair.

"It's fine." Kira's voice was throbbing in anger. "Playing sniper is not exactly what I had in mind."

"I told you to stay down," Dax reminded.

"I couldn't just stay down," Kira's phaser caught the security officer crossing the perimeter on the run off his shoulder; it was enough to bring him down.

"How do you know…" Dax was silent for a second.

"I don't," Kira assured. All she knew it was one more of them asleep for an hour and therefore one less. "Odo…"

"Believe so." Odo arm's cracked out like a whip, securing the fallen phaser rifle from wreaking any further havoc, good or bad.

"Excellent," Martok approved.

Odo grunted. "I learned that trick from you -- What?" he said to Kira's eyes glittering at him like some enraged demonic lifeform.

"Give me that thing!" she tore the rifle out of his hand. "If you must know, the ankle feels like its been run over six or seven times!"

"At least," Dax agreed.

"Right!" Kira said. And for all she knew, that security officer could have been one of them. "Now we're even." she thrust the rifle back at Odo. "Disruptor. Cuff him."

"I'm cuffing him," Odo's arm whipped forward, security bracelets in hand.

"How many does that make?" Martok sighed, tiring of the diversion.

"Three of each," Odo referenced his little stack of phaser rifles next to him. "And three sets of handcuffs left."

"Which we will use if we are lucky within the next hour. I should be fighting by the side of my men instead of sitting here playing with you -- I'm with you," he apprised Kira. "A warrior is a warrior, and we are warriors. If these were true warriors we were fighting they would put one of their disruptors on overload and bring this bar down around us."

"Yes, well, they're true enough for my liking," Odo grunted. "Let's not give them any ideas."

"Perhaps one to take with them into their next life," Martok nodded sharply to Dax. "Ready?"

"Only if I get to lead," Dax smiled. "I can't see where it hurts to ask first."

Benjamin read her mind, interjecting over Odo's com badge to immediately begin disarming all Special Forces security personnel without prejudice.

"Well, maybe just a little prejudice," Odo ogled his and Dax's respective yellow jumpsuit. "Not to be arrogant, but I'm confident I can hold my own. What about you?"

"I'll take my chances." Dax was gone with Martok to do battle, leaving Kira and Odo to hold down the fort.

"He didn't mean that," Odo reassured Kira. "Martok. About taking it into their next life. Not the way it sounded. They're not all Bajoran."

"No, just enough of them," Kira replied, sourly. 

"Two thirds, approximately," Odo grunted.

"He's lucky I don't kill him."

"Who's that?"

"Shakaar." Kira eyed the brilliant evidence of disruptor technology being put to the test in the distant background of the dining room's upper tiers. "Sisko's area."

"Someone's playing with a little harder ball than most of them," Odo nodded. "That was a seven easily, maybe an eight. In any event, the Federation's going to love this repair bill."

"Odo, I just can't sit here like this!" Kira's angry cry was frustrated, thinking of Sisko and trying not to think of Lange who was probably dead.

"I was wondering when we were going to get around to that. All right. Wait a minute. I activated the rifles' safety interlocks, I didn't override the program -- "

"We don't have a minute," Kira trained her phaser on the pile of them. "Get back!"

"Seven?" Odo guessed as the rifles vanished, feeling the tingling charge of Kira's disruptor through his bio-electric nervous system.

"Eight," Kira reset her rifle to a more reasonable level three. "I didn't want to push it at nine."

"I won't tell if you won't tell," Odo agreed. "Not that destruction of evidence isn't a serious offense."

"What evidence?"

"Point."

Sisko interrupted again over Odo's com badge with instructions to drop them in their tracks. Something had happened. Likely to do with that disruptor business in his area.

"Sorry," Dax apologized to the Special Forces Captain and his team of two as she requested their arms.

"No, we understand, Commander," Hawk reassured with the appropriate amount of frustration and concern. He was mildly unusual looking would be all Dax would have to say she noticed about him. An alien-looking alien? That didn't make any sense since she was an alien, too. Or at least not Human. Neither was he. He was Bajoran. An average-sized man around Julian's age. Perhaps it was the eyes that didn't quite match the face or the voice. He had a large face. Round. The eye sockets very pronounced. Actually, if someone told her someone had done a reasonably poor job of surgical alternation she wouldn't have been surprised. He looked Cardassian under his Bajoran face. The Cardassian skull was large and difficult to hide. Commonly all they had to do was pick a man in somewhat better proportions than this one.

"Here everyone was worried about you," Hawk turned away from Dax to address Martok; the Trill's glancing gaze over him lasting just a moment longer than he would have preferred.

Martok snatched the phaser rifle from him passing it to one of his two men. "I have yet to figure out why. I came to fight, not to enlist my men's assistance as prison guards."

Hawk laughed. "Where do you want us?"

Dax was thinking about the far side of the gambling area away from the wall of the mob where they were now. The security Captain must have been following her train of thought. He started out on his own only to stop.

"Disruptor," Hawk nodded. You could hear the crackling of the cascading energy vaporizing a supporting section of the tiers causing the immediate affected dining area to collapse. You could certainly see it spreading up almost to the ceiling like licking fingers.

The palms of Dax's hands were wet. "That's Benjamin's area." she struck herself in the chest, forgetting she had lost her com badge somewhere in the beginning. "Damn it!" she took off, tripping over Rom crawling on the floor.

"Um, sorry," Rom apologized as Dax came out of her stumble to catch her balance before she fell.

"It's all right," Dax started to give him a hand up when she realized he was covered with an awful lot of blood. "Rom…" she grabbed him.

"Um, no, it's not me…" Rom was shaking his head, pointing back at the crowd, his words tumbling over each other. "The floor…I had to crawl. And, yes, Dukat. Gul Dukat. He's hurt. Real bad maybe. Leeta told me to run and get Julian…Have you seen him?" he finished. By that time Dax had made her decision.

"General!" she whirled around. Martok and his men were gone. So were the three Bajorans and the phaser rifles, with a little luck to assist Martok in checking on Benjamin. She would have to worry about that later. "Where's Dukat?"

"At the bar," Rom nodded. "Maybe the stairs? He was at the stairs."

"Find Julian," she instructed, plunging into the crowd. "Check the gambling area …they're trying to clear it for triage…" 

"Um, yup, okay," Rom agreed. "I'll find Julian."

"Captain…" Worf's head snapped up from requesting the Bajoran's phaser rifle with the sight and sound of the disruptor blast. "Excuse me," he snatched the officer's rifle, activating his com badge, "you are now disarmed…Commander Worf to Captain Sisko…"

The security officer had a different idea. He grabbed the phaser rifle back. Worf huffed. "You are obviously an infiltrator."

He was. Determined to get out of there, Klingon or no Klingon. Worf easily caught the butt of the phaser rifle aiming for his face. The Bajoran caught a strike from a hand phaser fired from out of bounds and dropped where he stood. Worf's momentary surprise dissolved into another huff. A second security officer he expected. Jadzia. Martok. He did not expect Sentinel Pfrann Dukat.

"Where did you get this?" Worf captured Pfrann attempting to fade back into the ruins of the rear of the upper dining area; the two of them suddenly having to duck for cover from an angry shower of phaser fire.

"It's almost drained," Pfrann snatched his hand phaser back to check its power cell.

"That is not the point," Worf insisted. "You are a diplomat. This sector has not yet been secured. We are in a crossfire between station security and two factions."

"They're trying to get through to the holosuites," Pfrann nodded. 

"I am aware of what they are trying to do," Worf assured.

__

"Well!" Pfrann leered with a waggle of his hand phaser set to overload. "Let's see what we can do to help them! Get ready to jump!"

Worf stared at the phaser. "Give me that," he grabbed for it.

"Fine. You throw it," Pfrann shrugged, already on a run across the tiers of steps.

Worf hesitated. A heartbeat away from deactivating the phaser, he changed his mind and gave it a heave into the heart of the first faction. It exploded with the intensity of a grenade; sufficient in routing the enraged enemy into the open, eager to give chase, and easily overpowered by station security pouring down over the dining area. Martok burst into a broad smile below with the sound of the explosion and the sight of Worf and the Cardassian child on the run across the upper levels under fire from behind and below; Sisko forgotten, he couldn't find him anyway.

"Ah! Now we fight!" he urged his men quickly into the arena to assist his friend.

CHAPTER FOUR

"You are as insane as any Klingon," Worf declared to Pfrann as he caught up with him. They were up and off the rail like a springboard, dropping down in the arms of the second small faction of six finding themselves hemmed in by Martok and his men being joined by Worf landing on his feet with a thud behind Pfrann. "I repeat, you are a diplomat. The Rules of Protocol are clear -- insure his surrender!" he quickly disarmed the Bajoran nearest him, tossing the phaser rifle to Pfrann who missed. Worf groaned. Once for Pfrann colliding in mid-air with a Bajoran when he leapt to catch the rifle. A second time for General Martok making the most of his battle easily won.

"Absurd," Martok wrenched the Federation toy away from his capture, casting it aside to hungrily eye his prize still free to continue his battle like the warrior he pretended to be. "What is the point of battle if there is no lesson learned?"

"The point of battle is victory," Worf assured. "Which has been achieved."

"Nonsense," Martok loomed close to the Bajoran stepping back from him. "The enemy we fight is elusive. Look, even now this one attempts to flee. Confident in his victory over some one-eyed old man -- _some being_ in a Federation suit who cannot decide if he is Klingon, or who he is -- his opinion, of course," he promised his friend Worf. "Not mine…And of course some _child." _he chuckled at Pfrann scrambling to get to his feet. "Seeking to get out of the way of a _man -- _eh?" Martok ignored the assistance of a squad of Sisko's security officers taking control of the secured Bajoran terrorists; his attention caught by the child on his back on the floor, a broken leg of a table in his hand.

"The point is still victory," Worf's firm hand came down on the shoulder of Martok's opponent. "You are under arrest. Remand yourself to Captain…"

"Anar," Hawk offered, in what the Klingon couldn't know was a malicious attempt to implicate the honorable elder uncle of his honorable First Minister Shakaar of Bajor. Anymore than the Klingon could know the officer standing in front of him was the Leader of the very enemy he fought. How could he know? Hawk's yellow skin shed for the far more suitable standard security uniform of Constable Odo's Bajoran Security Force in anticipation, of course. Naturally in anticipation that the yellow jumpsuit that got him in would, in turn, impede his getting out? But then who did the Federation think they were dealing with? Who did this Changeling of the Dominion? Who did Shakaar, or for that matter Kai Winn and her Klingon Chancellor Gowron, his employers? 

"Captain Anar is now your leader," Worf instructed the Bajoran dissidents. "Obey him and his men or the consequences will be severe. Captain…"

"With pleasure, Commander," Hawk took repossession of his men. Five of them. The sixth was preoccupied with wondering what Pfrann was planning to do with the broken table leg.

Worf sighed. "Dukat…"

"No!" Martok stopped him. "Look at the way he grips it -- two hands towards the ends, and now one hand in the center. What does that remind you of?"

"A weapon," Worf assured. "The table leg is off a medium alloy -- "

"Precisely!" Martok's hand clapped him in the back. "A weapon. Not just any. _Bat'telh!_ Eh? Bat'telh."

Worf looked at him. "Bat'telh."

"Perhaps a slightly crooked one," Martok shrugged. "Twisted in the shape of an _S_ -- but, see? Those are his points. The _blades_ of his sword. The square, shaved foot -- and, of course," he shrugged again, "her ragged broken end."

Worf frowned at the slow, deliberate precision of Pfrann's movements. "It is perhaps reminiscent of the bat'telh…"

Martok's hand struck him in his back again. "Worf! You know the bat'telh as well as I do. That is bat'telh."

"Fine," Worf sighed. "It is bat'telh. A weapon, not a dance. This battle is over, we have more to fight."

"What fight?" Martok scoffed. "The spitting of a phaser over here -- the spitting of a phaser over there. It was over before it started. Now it is nothing but _crowd control._ The Bajoran is intrigued. Excited himself by the prospect of letting the blood of Dukat. Let them play it out. They're only toying with each other. Seeking to make their point."

"The Bajoran," Word assured, "is confused by our lack of intervention, not wishing to be struck by the leg of some chair."

"Table!" Martok corrected. "Deservedly so. Look around you at the chaos, destruction -- _death_ that man has caused. You think that is right? Any of you?" he challenged Sisko's patient and waiting security crew. "Do you see something worthy of applause rather than punishment for this man's actions? He has killed you. His own people. Your wives, your brothers -- _the children_ you will now never have. If he wants to fight Cardassians or Klingons, let him. That woman's body I see lying over there is Bajoran. Her head and heart crushed as if she were nothing."

"She is Bolian," Worf caught Martok's pointing hand. "If you do not desist, I will be forced to arrest you for attempting to incite a riot."

"It is a riot!" Martok laughed until his stomach ached. "Oh, Worf, where are your Klingon hearts? Grant the child his revenge. His opportunity to become a _man._ He has been denied his dinner -- we know how much Cardassians like to eat! As much as a Klingon likes to fight. Why do you think they are all fat by my age?"

Worf's eyes rolled. "An old insult which constitutes propaganda that cannot be supported by fact."

"Have you ever seen one who wasn't?"

"A senseless debate. Sentinel Dukat will surrender his weapon now, or it will be taken from him."

"What about the Bajoran?" Martok checked.

"You try my patience, General," Worf moved him aside with a final notice for Pfrann and the intruder also now armed with a makeshift weapon and circling the Cardassian Sentinel circling him. "This area is secured. The intruder will remand himself to station security as ordered. Sentinel Dukat will stand down from his battle -- that is over."

He was too late. Pfrann disarmed the terrorist with a raking upward strike of the blunted foot of the table leg, plunging its broken end into the center of the Bajoran's chest. The flesh of the man's back bulged outwards from the controlled force of the thrust. Pfrann yanked the table leg out. The torn Bajoran heart ripped from its cavity dangling on the sharp fingers of the leg's end.

"One of those severe consequences," Hawk turned away with his squad of men and prisoners. All of them visibly unperturbed, and inwardly remembering.

Thirty meters away Kira poised in her hobbling run unable to believe what she was looking at.

"Believe it," Odo grunted. Certain there was a reason for Mister Worf's lacking response, as well as the lacking response of his squad. Shock, coupled with satisfied revenge. Martok's response was also reasonable for a Klingon. Actually, the only one Odo could see was questionable was Pfrann.

"Questionable?" Kira whirled on him. "Questionable?"

"For lack of a better word."

"Oh!" Kira stormed forward. 

"Now it's over," Pfrann held his weapon with its grizzly prize in presentation to Worf. "His life for the attempt on my brother's."

Martok howled in ghoulish delight. "An honorable sentiment! Surely you would not punish the child -- this _young man -- warrior_," he beseeched his friend focused on the sharp, cool Cardassian eyes as cold and brilliant as yellow diamonds. "For an act you would commit yourself in your brother's name?"

"'A warrior's blood boils before the fire is hot,'" Worf quoted the Klingon proverb to Pfrann. "I misjudged the extent of your anger. The responsibility of the intruder's death is mine, not yours."

"Excellent!" Martok approved. "That's true, you did. It's all right. So did I," he patted Worf's chest, stopping him from taking Pfrann's offer. "No, wait a minute. A valuable lesson I wish to teach the child in his love affair with my bat'telh. Don't concern yourself. We have no argument with each other -- keep it," he instructed Pfrann. "I'll take this one…"

"General," Worf sighed to Martok securing the Bajoran's lost weapon.

"Ignore him," Martok encouraged Pfrann. "He whines like a female. We are men. I want you to attack. _Lunge!_ At me as you did at him -- you refuse the opportunity of a lesson from a master?"

Hesitated perhaps, Pfrann did not refuse. He lunged, the chair leg slicing down on Martok's weapon that did not quiver. Martok smiled, easily thrusting Pfrann away from him. "As I thought, your strikes are as weak as they are strong. You understand the difference now between bat'telh and the Bajoran and the Sword of Honor and the Klingon? One you fight to protect a brother too weak to fight for himself….The other…" he goaded Pfrann circling him, "you fight for the honor of your home -- a father who is fat! _Cardassia Prime_ which is _mine!_" Their swords clanged again. Martok delayed in thrusting the child away from him, amused by the straining effort in Pfrann's arms and the hatred he could see in the golden eyes -- looking down instead of straight at him. Pfrann's foot kicked out, catching the General around his ankle of his blind side. Martok was down, flat on his back on the floor, the child's table leg poised to pierce his throat.

"Or heart," Martok laughed, moving the blade to a more appropriate location. "You take his, you're afraid to take a Klingon's?"

"If you insist," Pfrann's arm jerked up and then down piercing the General's armor deeply enough to wound more than his pride. Martok was surprised to find the meter long pole, or whatever it was sticking out of his chest. Odo wasn't quite sure why Martok was surprised, but he was.

"What do you think you're doing? Give me that!" Kira descended on Pfrann and Martok, grabbing one by the arm and the other by his chair leg? Odo surveyed the stick.

"Table leg," Worf identified.

"Yes, I see that now," Odo agreed as Kira yanked it out of the General's chest. "Probably should be glad she has a broken ankle -- that goes for you, too," he alerted Worf. The station's security squad was smart enough to get out of there with their prisoners -- all but one Odo nodded to the bloodied corpse. "Heart of targ, I don't suppose?"

"Sentinel Dukat was defending his brother," Worf sighed. "I am responsible."

"Tell it to the judge," Odo suggested, doubting if Major Kira would be all that interesting in listening. Just ask Sentinel Dukat.

"_He has two_!" Pfrann jeered his defense, not exactly concerned to find himself taken by the hand.

"Hearts." Odo directed Kira's attention back to the one heart now lying on the floor instead of dangling off a table leg.

"Bat'telh," Martok was on his feet, bleeding, but otherwise fine. "I was attempting to teach a lesson, had I known the child had the soul of a targ, I would have declined."

"Yes, well, I believe there's a proverb about the dangers of lying down with targs," Odo grunted, more interested for the moment in protecting Sentinel Dukat from Kira. If the need be. There was no need. 

"I see it," Kira snapped. "Give me the cuffs. Give them to me!"

Odo did. She twisted them on. One cuff around Pfrann's wrist, the other around hers with a firm, emphatic yank to test them, or him.

"Now behave yourself," she chastised, fair to say Pfrann not the only one with the incredulous expression on his face. "That's not how the Federation does things. Do you understand me?"

If Pfrann did, he was alone. If he didn't seek to antagonize Kira anyway, he would not have been Dukat. Which he was. From the nerve, to the leer, down to the whine. _"Oh, but, Nerys!"_

Kira's hand cracked his cheek. "I said that's enough!" 

It was. Obvious also. Again, Odo wasn't quite sure what Worf or Martok or Pfrann saw as being obvious. An outraged surrogate mother silencing any further back talk? He had an idea Pfrann at least felt he was being treated as a naughty child. That's what captured Odo's attention. The naughty child. Apparently Pfrann wasn't the only one who was angrier than he looked. Major Kira was not about to express sympathy for the deep pool of blood on the floor regardless of the Bajoran ridges on the man's nose. Odo's gaze cast itself over Rom joining them wearing his own pool of blood on his knees, waist, and elbows of his trousers and shirt.

"Um, sorry…" Rom prefaced what he had to say with his usual and unnecessary apology.

"Quite all right, a minor display of brotherly love, that's all," Odo nodded. 

"Um, yup, I see him," Rom agreed. "That's okay. Doesn't upset me. One of them hit Leeta. She hit him back. Morn, too. _Pow!_ Didn't have to hit him again."

"Good for them," Odo approved. "Anything else? Or can I get back to the unpopular task of arresting the hero of the hour?"

"You're not arresting anyone," Kira corrected, immediately and heatedly. "You heard Worf."

"I did, and we'll sort it out -- What?" he said to Rom saying something about Dukat.

"Um, yup, Dukat," Rom nodded to Pfrann. "Your brother. He's hurt. Like that… Well, maybe not exactly like that…" he clarified as Pfrann stared at the heartless bastard on the floor, no pun intended. "How…" Rom frowned suddenly puzzled, about to say something like how did Pfrann know?

He didn't. Obvious by his face. But he would find out. Also obvious. Even if he didn't know where.

"The stairs. Maybe. Could be the bar," Rom offered as Pfrann and Kira took off on a mad dash together. Reasonable, they were lashed together. Unrealistic, less the marked discrepancy in leg length and therefore speed, one of Kira's ankles was fractured. Her feet skidded out from under her, snapping Pfrann backward as the handcuffs held and he likewise hit the floor with a crash. 

"Children," Martok stooped in his indignation to sever the bond with his kut'luch.

"Wouldn't know," Odo replied as Kira and Pfrann took off again, that time going their separate ways.

"Don't misunderstand the gesture," Martok waved his dagger before reseating it at his waist. "All is not forgiven. Sisko will hear about the unprovoked attack on my person, as will Chancellor Gowron."

"Yes, well," Odo drawled, "under the circumstances then you shouldn't mind seeing what you can do about assisting Mister Worf in finding one of them now."

"If you insist," Martok sighed.

"I do," Odo assured with an eye over Rom.

"Um, yup," Rom nodded, "I'll find Doctor Bashir -- have you seen him?"

"He hasn't been answering his hail…" Odo looked around. "Probably lost his com badge in the shuffle -- either that or he's among the injured himself. Try the rear of the gambling area. Station security was under orders to clear it for triage -- that's probably what some of this nonsense was about…" Odo continued looking around as Rom scurried off; the team of station security and their prisoners were no where to be seen. He activated his com badge. "Constable Odo to Captain Sisko…" There was also still no answer from him. He liked that less than Bashir.

"A lot less," Odo glanced down at the unbeating heart at his feet. He had a choice. Step over it, or go around it. He crushed the muscle to flattened pulp under his foot as he left to see what he could do about locating Captain Sisko, even though no, it wasn't the Federation way. Possibly one of the reasons why he preferred his position as Head of the Station's Bajoran Security Force. Still, he had a job to do. That job was to keep order. Or to reclaim order as the case was. He activated his com badge again, that time looking for O'Brien who answered.

"Seen Sisko?" Odo just wondered.

__

"Not for the last minute or so…" the Chief's voice was distorted by the buzzing hub of the crowd. _"No, wait a minute, I see him…Over by the door…Why? Something wrong?"_ there was chuckle there, underscoring the irony of the question.

"Nothing extraordinary," Odo replied. "There's a possibility our intruders came equipped to blend in with station security as well."

__

"Huh?"

"It's called an escape hatch," Odo nodded. "Simple matter of wearing one uniform under the other. I believe we may have just handed a group of Bajoran intruders to a group of Bajoran intruders dressed as station personnel -- not Special Forces."

__

"I know what it's called," O'Brien assured. _"It's called if there's one, there's 300 of them in here on top of the first three hundred. Now what?"_

"Yes, well, now's not the time to panic…"

__

"I'm not panicking. I'm saying now what? You can't arrest every Bajoran in uniform."

"I can detain them," Odo corrected. "That's an order to disarm and detain them."

__

"Right," O'Brien scoffed. _"From there every damn Bajoran on the station."_

"Or at least the one's perspiring profusely from wearing three layers of clothing," Odo grunted.

__

"Huh?" O'Brien said.

"I said it's over," Odo assured. "Mission accomplished. All of that. Gul Dukat's been injured. Mortally, possibly. From Rom's brief description, more than likely."

There was silence from the Chief's end. Followed by a drawn out: _"Oh, Jeez… Now what happens?"_

"We'll have to see," Odo agreed.

"Good Lord…" Bashir carefully stepped over the open graves of the gambling area where the terrorists didn't even have the common decency to use disruptor force powerful enough to cause immediate cessation of life. These people died horribly. Their last moments agonizing, terrified cries feeling their ruptured veins and arteries pouring in hemorrhage, their burning flesh falling in chucks off their bones dislocating and fracturing with the eruptive disturbance of their molecular structure. Bashir heard the whimpering of the one being still alive and shivering in thermal shock before he located the life signs. She was Capellan. A Federation planet of humanoids on the Klingon border. A harsh planet with a harsh climate, harsh people and harsh rules. She didn't look harsh lying there with her clothing and flesh fused together as one. Her body destroyed, it was her strength that insisted she live. Even now as Bashir slipped his jacket off to cover her more in act of compassion than any ability to give her some warmth, she was trying to say something, her contorted, burned hand trying to get his attention.

"Doctor Bashir," Bashir smiled gently. "The medical staff is here. You're going to be all right."

"Why?" It was her first word, her only word and her last uttered with her dying breath. How profound the question was coming from the mouth of such an uncivilized species herself. Unless they were all suddenly civilized in death. Maybe that was the key. In order to redeem it you first had to destroy it. He couldn't believe that. He thought of someone else's profound words extraordinarily applicable to the occasion. "'Let there be light, said God, and there was light. Let there be blood, says man, and there's a sea.' Lord Byron," he smiled up at his evening charge nurse Michelle, her round, caring middle-aged face watching the two of them tenderly. "Human poet. Eighteenth, 19th century. He also died quite young…thirty-six?" Bashir frowned. "Can't remember." Anymore than he could remember at the moment if the quote was from a letter or a poem.

"_Don Juan_, I think," Michelle nodded. "Are you all right? I saw you hanging from the dining floor. I couldn't tell if you jumped or fell."

"A combination of the two," Bashir got to his feet. "But, no, I'm fine -- you?" he suddenly realized she was somewhat overdressed for duty rotation.

"It's Monday."

"Yes," Bashir probably knew that somewhere in the back of his mind. "Of course, what am I saying…for God's sake, you weren't here, were you?"

"For dinner. Hank and I just thought we'd have a quiet night out -- it's our anniversary."

"Is it?" Bashir said.

"Twenty-five years. We did what you did -- jumped. I don't know if it was right or wrong. We had just sat down and the next thing I knew Hank was saying to jump -- so I jumped."

"Hank?" Bashir stared at her, hardly a lithe, slender woman herself. "Your Hank?"

"You, he's not," Michelle chuckled in agreement. "He broke his ankle. I told him, Hank, I realize it hurts, but I can't be concerned about that now…He's a good man, he understands. I've called for a full medical detail -- I wasn't sure if you had a chance."

"No, I did," Bashir agreed. "But thank you."

"It's my job. I've also requested any available medical personnel who might be here to try and get to the rear of the gambling area -- what do you think?" She gestured around where she already had about a dozen people lined up sitting or lying down with the assistance of two other courageous souls she had managed to get to help her. Bashir had no idea who either of the people were other than he knew they weren't medical personnel. "It looks like the perfect place for triage to me."

"Oh," Bashir startled. "Well, yes, it's fine…Sorry, but I don't believe I even realized we were walking…" he looked back over the steps he had taken; quite a distance, actually.

Michelle nodded. "Are you sure you're all right?"

"Oh, yes," Bashir promised. "Probably just a residual effect from the disruptor -- why?" 

"You're crying," she smiled.

"Oh," Bashir touched his damp cheek. "Well, yes, that's true, I am. Definitely a residual effect from the disruptor…All right, let's see…" he stepped into his waiting room. "Standard evac procedures once security gets that entrance cleared for us. We'll reserve requests for emergency beam out for the truly critical cases -- like this one," he hit his com badge; it wasn't there. The jacket, of course. Either that or he lost it in his free-fall.

"Never go anywhere without it," Michelle tossed him hers.

"You're the best," Bashir issued the call for the transport. It worked. Shields up, forcefields engaged throughout the station, the computer found her needed window to effect transport. He heard the distant sound of a grenade exploding in the background, sensing the shaking of the dining area overhead from the shock wave and pounding invasion of station security and medical personnel bypassing the riot spilling out and engulfing the first level of the Promenade. In ten minutes he had a staff and a working sterile area for emergency stabilization. Not long after that he had security urgently calling him over his com badge for assistance and Rom standing at his side saying something about Dukat. 

"Dukat?"

"Yup," Rom nodded. "He's hurt."

"Yes, well, he may be hurt, but so are these people hurt."

"Um…" Rom hesitated as Bashir kept working. "Does that mean you're not coming?"

"No, I'm coming," Bashir assured. "This one's next…"

"Got it," Michelle said.

"I just find it distasteful that someone's life -- anyone's life is valued at some higher level than someone else's -- especially under circumstances such as these," Bashir informed Rom on a fast trot across the gambling area into the sea of bodies being forced back into the bar to control the madness. "We don't even know who these people are. For all we know he could be the finest mathematician in galaxy. She could be an opera singer -- a molecular cyberneticist -- " he tripped over something. Pushed on by the power of the crowd by the time he managed to turn around all he could see was a thousand pair of feet.

"Does a knife in his stomach count as something serious?" 

"Dukat was stabbed in his stomach?" That didn't make any sense. Who was out there fighting hand-to-hand combat in the middle of all of this? Martok? Or perhaps not Martok personally, but some Klingon? Bashir eyed Rom, certainly not wanting to plant a seed of suspicion if there was no cause, but, yes, he did want to ask. 

"Um…" Rom was thinking about the position of the knife. "Maybe a little lower? Kind of near his hip?"

"Right or left?"

"Left," Rom nodded. "Yup. He bent over to pick up the phaser rifle and _bam_ the Bajoran got him and all this blood just started bubbling."

That settled who. Bashir frowned at Rom's description. "Bubbling."

"Around the knife?"

"It's still in him?"

"Yup. Janice told him not to take it out."

"Common iliac?" Bashir guessed. "Yes, possibly. Even if the knife managed to penetrate his abdominal muscles to a vital organ…"

"No, it's in," Rom nodded. "Way in. Can't even see it. Just the handle."

"Still…" Bashir said, "the immediate hemorrhage would be internal, not external…"

"No, it's external," Rom promised. "Lot's of it…would, um, that iliac make a lot of blood?"

"Lose," Bashir assured. "It's an arterial branch of his abdominal aorta. He could bleed to death in a matter of minutes."

"Wow," Rom whistled. "Guess it's all right if you help him then."

"Yes, well, that's probably still a matter of opinion," Bashir acknowledged. "But no, it's fine if I help him."

"Good," Rom breathed. "Because she's pretty upset. Janice. And, yup, Leeta, too."

"I'm quite sure they are upset. I doubt if anyone came here with the idea that they, or the person sitting next to them would be dead within a matter of minutes. I know I certainly didn't…Where are we going, by the way?"

"The bar," Rom nodded. "Maybe the stairs."

"The bar…" that sounded familiar.

"Security," Rom pointed to his com badge. "They called." 

"Yes, I know," Bashir fingered the communicator. "It's just that it's not mine. I overrode Michelle's encryption to effect emergency transport."

"The computer would know that."

"Yes, I know."

"Then…what are you saying?'

"I don't know." Only that he would have expected Sisko, Kira, Dax, any of them to identify themselves, not simply say _Security to Doctor Bashir_…

CHAPTER FIVE

"I'm not sure why I did that," Anar remarked thoughtfully after wishing Sisko and his staff happy and safe landings. With the Prophets' blessing, perhaps Legate Damar might just be killed.

"He'd do the same to you." his son resumed scanning to locate Janice.

"For all the right reasons, simply the wrong Shakaar." The comment was cold, not joking. So was its following one. "That includes Adon. Remind me not to kill him either with my bare hands. The child hasn't the heart for this. If Adon saw anything, he saw that, too -- "

"I have Janice," Sian interjected. "At the front…first level…between the bar and the stairs. Anon's with her…that's his proximity detector?"

Anar was already over the rail; it was fastest way down. Gesturing for his son to toss the Cardassian field unit to him before he followed.

"Yes, that's Anon's," Anar returned the field unit; disappearing into the crowd, his son next to him. "Block it and that security tag of Janice's. We don't want Hawk tracking them. Keep looking for Pfrann…"

"If I block Pfrann, I won't be able to track him other than by his life signs."

"It'll have to do. Try signaling Tan. See if he can locate a window to transport -- Doesn't have to be the ship, just somewhere a little quieter -- "

"Anon's injured," Sian reported. "Life functions are registering abnormally low… no evidence of molecular disruption or thermal exposure…he's in shock whatever it is."

"A fall perhaps?" Anar proposed, pushing onward through the crowd, wishing the unit was capable of medical analysis; he activated his com badge. "Security to Doctor Bashir…"

"No attempted response," Sian shook his head. "Communicator's working."

"It was quite a drop," Anar admitted. "Would have thought though Sisko's young, dashing Starfleet officer was made of stronger stuff…Override data, control, encrypt, decrypt, Bashir, Julian, Medical SO -- now do you have him?"

"Dermal sensor Bashir…" Sian nodded to his father's relief. "Communicator decrypt, encrypt Michelle Faraday CN…Voice discrimination Bashir. Location… Center, first level."

"Close enough," Anar activated his com badge. "Security to Doctor Bashir, you're needed at the bar right now." He got there himself just after Commander Dax.

They had a semblance of order going anyway as Odo slithered his way through to Sisko at the entrance in his role as traffic director, determined to control the swarm and keep a path clear; now largely for medical personnel moving in. What station security they had available already appeared to be there. About two hundred Odo estimated out on the Promenade, which put about a hundred inside, not three as the Chief lamented. They only had three hundred. That should make it a little easier to count uniformed heads if suddenly Sisko did end up with four hundred station security officers on the inside and no Special Forces.

"Wouldn't count on it," Odo rethought his thinking of security uniforms under those yellow jumpsuits eyeing the added trouble of spectators being held back now that the immediate area of the Promenade was being brought under control. That was good news. One fully involved riot was enough for one night.

"Where to?" he asked Sisko directing the patrons' egress into an orderly single file.

"Straight on to the Infirmary," Sisko assured.

"Temple and Security Holding Area. Got it," Odo nodded, a more interested eye on those Special Forces unarmed and being kept into the same single file moving slowly and steadily down the Promenade. "I'll take over. There's something else you'll probably want to check on…"

"What?" Sisko's head bent closer, trying to hear; his attention distracted by the Chief abandoning his post to work his way forward.

"Dukat," Odo repeated just as quietly as the first time, correctly interpreting the Captain's expression. "Quite. Of all people."

Sisko snatched the com badge from the security officer next to him, overrode the communicator's assigned authority with his authority and was hailing Bashir; by then Chief was there about to mouth Dukat.

"Yes, yes," Sisko's nod was rapid, hailing the unresponsive Bashir again, and barking at the computer to locate and lock.

__

"Locating…" the system agreed, locating the doctor and locking him in as requested.

Bashir answered his hail for immediate assistance. _"Yes, I know. I'm on my way…Did you just call?"_

"No," Odo shook his head at Sisko's glance.

"Me either," O'Brien shrugged.

"Kira, maybe," Odo grunted.

__

"No, it wasn't Kira…" Bashir's reply was interesting. _"It was definitely a man…Curiosity, that's all. With the distortion, I couldn't really hear who it was."_

"Distortion?" the Chief grimaced, knowing that was probably not true, the same as Odo knew it wasn't.

__

"It's clear now," Bashir signed off.

Sisko was already gone with O'Brien by the time Odo finished casting a second, concerned look over their latest group of assistants three hundred strong.

"Janice…" Anon swayed with the initial, sudden shock to his system, his hand fumbling with Janice's pushing his away from the knife.

"No, don't pull it out. Anon, listen to me, you can't pull it out."

"But that doesn't make any sense…"

"Yes, it does," she promised, straining to keep her footing under his weight. "It's like the ship…Remember the piece of your ship? How you broke it off?"

"I remember I didn't like it…" his mouth brushed her hair, feeling her arms grow much larger and stronger like she had four instead of two.

"Allow me, my dear," Garak offered Janice his services and strength setting Anon back up firmly on his feet. "We really are even heavier than we look."

"Thank you. " Janice gabbed up the hem of her dress, stuffing it tightly around the hilt of the knife. "Don't touch it, Anon. Listen to me, don't touch it…Leeta, see if you can find me another knife…"

"No, don't do that," Anon tried pushing her hand away. "You'll ruin your dress."

"Don't worry about the dress, you're hurt. Garak's going to help us get to the bar…Are you listening to me?" her hand smoothed his cheek starting to feel damp, the eyes watching Garak dulled and cloudy as his blood drained steadily into his abdomen. "We're going to let Garak help us. You need to sit down…"

"Elam Garak, Gul Dukat, you remember me," Garak smiled under Anon's inspection. "We met last evening…"

"I remember you," Anon assured.

"Yes," Garak encouraged him to take an unsteady step or two. "And may I take this opportunity to say how I find it so very interesting that you would support the very man who killed your sister…"

"Well, maybe I find it as interesting as my father," Anon retorted, "that Ziyal would chose life with the man who killed her grandfather."

"That would be me," Garak smiled at Janice. "However, I insist my participation in the execution of Ziyal's grandfather -- "

"My grandfather!" Anon snapped, his arm groping for Janice right there with him. "Don't pay any attention to him, he's only trying to frighten you."

"On the contrary," Garak reassured her, "only a friendly word or two of advice -- "

"I said shut up!" Anon's fingers dug into Garak's shoulder. Partially in an effort to keep himself walking, and partially in an effort to inflict a little pain. "I've already told her everything. About Mister Damar. You. What do you think about that?"

"An honesty uncharacteristic of my race," Garak advised Janice. "Not that we can't be honest, our conditioning simply doesn't allow it…As I can only say in defense of Ziyal," he suggested to Anon, "that her lack of sympathy for her Cardassian grandfather was drawn from her Bajoran half."

"As opposed to her ardent loyalty to Cardassia," Anon sneered.

"Precisely," Garak smiled. "A simple matter of dual genetics. Whose confusion has to penetrate…deeper than one's skin," he glanced at the saturated ball of silk wrapped around the knife. "Compression of the abdominal muscles, is that your idea, my dear?"

"One of them," Janice agreed as they reached the bar unchallenged by any new extremists attempting to force their way through the crowd filling and pressing closer moment by moment; certainly threatening enough.

"And the others?" Garak asked.

"Let him help you," Janice kissed Anon's cheek with a soothing smile for his aggravation. "Don't fight him, Anon. Let him just sit you down…we don't want the knife to move."

"Yes, all right, all right. Sit me down. Sit me down." He was down. His breathing increasingly labored and his color fading to an interesting gray. "Now what?" he asked. 

"Now we wait for Doctor Bashir," she nodded. "It shouldn't be long at all."

"No, I don't want to wait. You do it. Whatever you need to do. Do it."

"I can't."

"What do you mean you can't?" he insisted. "I know you can."

"I don't have any equipment?"

That was right, too. No equipment. No replicators. No phasers. No anything. He was back to inspecting Garak. "What are you looking at? She knows what she's doing. That's a big secret no one can know? Fine. No one can know it. Tell them and I'll kill you -- all of you," he promised Leeta, Quark, whoever else was there.

"If you insist," Garak accepted for their small group that included the aforementioned as well as Morn, yes.

"I insist." Anon cursed him with a remarkably vulgar Cardassian expression and a second promise of extreme bodily harm. Doctor Lange he merely told her that he loved her with an attempted kiss of her hand stroking his cheek.

"What is this with the bar?" Quark roused himself with an irritable snap.

"He needs to sit!" Leeta gave him a crack in the fourth lobe. "Help me find a knife."

"Huh?'

"A knife! She needs to cut her dress. You had a tray load of them."

"Like I remember," Quark threw up his hands. "I remember the dress…I remember the water…I remember he kicked her down the stairs…"

"Pushed!" Leeta gave him a karate chop to the back of his kneecap. He was down, and she was up, tromping on his hand. "You stupid jerk, you were standing right on one!"

"Glad to help," Quark muttered. "Now, let's see if you can trip."

"I heard that!"

__

"'I heard that,'" Quark mimicked, carefully closing and opening his hand. "Yeow. Ow ow ow! He's not the only one who's heavier than he looks. Did you hear _that_?"

"This okay?" Leeta held her blade suspended over Garak's hard work and soul.

"Yes, that's fine," Janice nodded.

"I also found some dinner napkins," Leeta took her pile of collected goodies from Morn with a giggle for Janice's hacked and savage looking dress. "I almost like it even better that way -- Garak, what about you?"

"Different, my dear, yes," Garak agreed, perspiring in the tight collar of his dinner jacket as he knelt before the King; Anon's feet propped up on his thighs to insure the abdominal muscles were compressed to their very tightest. "If you could just loosen the top button for me…"

"This one?" Leeta seized his collar in her freshly manicured claws.

"Yes, exactly," Garak inhaled. "Just loosen, my dear, no reason to _yank _it off…"

"Oh, well," Leeta tossed the button away. "Too late."

"Yes," Garak sighed. "Quite all right. It's a little too Federation in its design anyway. Major Kira made a point of bringing that to my attention -- expert on the subject of fashion, that she is."

"Uh, huh," Quark said. "Is this the same Major Kira I know?"

"Unfortunately, yes," Garak watched Doctor Lange gently and calmly mopping Anon's brow. "Doctor?"

"He's in shock," Janice replied. "Keep his feet elevated…Leeta, let me have another one of those napkins…"

"Oh, I understand the premise," Garak assured. "Merely questioning the benefit. The Cardassian heart…"

"It's the same," Janice discarded her saturated silk rag for two fresh napkins to stuff around the wound.

"I beg your pardon?" Garak blinked.

"Pulmonary function. Location, size of the heart is relative only to if he should sit inclined or reclined…knees bent, or straight," she smiled at Anon reclined slightly with his back supported by the bar. "I love you," she kissed his cheek. "Here you were so worried about me…Now, isn't that silly? But that's all right. Everything will be fine. You'll see."

"Really," Garak said. "How fascinating. I'll have to remember to have that discussion with Julian…"

"He'll be here," Leeta promised Janice.

"Oh, I know," Janice never doubted it for a moment.

It wasn't Julian who arrived first though, it was Commander Dax. After a quick look around the stairs buried in an avalanche of patrons, she spotted the outline of a Special Forces officer lying off to the side. From there it was simply a matter of following the right trail of blood.

"No, you don't have to move," Dax reassured Janice. "You're doing fine. I just want to check his pulse…"

"And?" Quark said.

"Pretty strong," Dax admitted, "considering…Leeta, take over for Garak. Just hold his feet, they don't have to be high…" she scanned the crowd quickly for any available communicator happening by. 

"To assist Rom in finding Julian," Garak straightened his stiffening back. "If I interpret your request correctly."

"Blood donor," Dax grinned, opting to just use Quark's terminal to effect an emergency beam out.

"Oh," Garak blinked, momentarily startled by her reply along with the sudden flash of yellow appearing to move him rather firmly out of the way. "Yes, of course, why didn't I think of that…"

Dax saw the same flash of color steps into her dash around the bar for Quark's console. They came from the opposite direction than she had. Two of them briefly, both Bajoran. One officer directing the other to continue on into the crowd while he paused at Dukat. What caught her eye other than the obvious yellow jumpsuit was the white hair. 

"See if you can find what happened to Dak'jar," Anar sent his son in search of his sergeant who was supposed to be there to prevent this. Perhaps not his brother's idea of fun, but definitely Anon.

"Don't react." Those muttered instructions were for Janice when he dropped in front of Anon just to have a look at how bad was bad. It was bad enough. He hadn't thought of a knife, certainly not someone's dinner knife. "Bashir's on his way…did you see who they were? Which way they went?" he asked his questions a little louder for the benefit of the trousered legs coming towards him as well as the Ferengi and the Cardassian Garak.

"Oh…" Janice said, her reaction no more surprised than anyone's to find security suddenly at her side. "Well, yes, they went…"

"They're over there," the Bajoran of anyone's dreams agreed, her heavy bosom breathing deeply with her excitement in Anar's face.

"That way," Quark clarified as Anar pardoned himself out from under Leeta's chest.

"Thank you," Anar quickly excused himself from spending any more time with any of them; the approaching smile on the face of the Trill Dax just a little too welcoming. The phaser rifle a little too casual in the way she held it.

"We're requesting all Special Forces relinquish their weapons…" Dax began with an apology to set the officer's mind at ease.

"Yes, I am aware of the order," Anar agreed on his hurried brush past her for the so indicated 'that way'.

"A little suspicious, maybe," Dax acknowledged, acutely conscious of the close quarters, the two conference delegates, one of whom was already injured, the crowd, and the phaser rifle in the Special Forces officer's hand . "Excuse me," she smiled at Janice and Leeta, and left in pursuit of the officer who had failed to comply with her polite request.

"She left," Quark mentioned.

"Yes…" Garak noticed that. "Somewhat in a hurry, too." His eyes were wide, round, searching Quark.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Well, I don't know," Garak breathed. "What are you thinking?"

"The guy's got white hair."

"That wasn't what I was thinking," Garak had to admit.

"Uh, huh," Quark said. "Well, it's what I'm thinking…Excuse me," he apologized for leaving the three kids on their own with only Morn for company. "But as the saying goes, _I've_ had just about enough of this…Give me one of those," he snatched one of the phaser rifles from Morn. "Let me show you how to really get things done -- right or wrong?" he hammered Garak in the gut with the rifle.

"Oh," Garak accepted the offer, or the phaser rifle at least.

"Well, just don't stand there," Quark sneered. "We're waiting."

"Yes, of course," Garak agreed, trying not to think of how twenty years ago he probably would have given his life's career for such an opportunity…"Not to be _presumptuous,"_ he swallowed, still not entirely convinced his eyes weren't playing tricks on him. "But was there something almost _familiar_ about our visiting guest…wouldn't you say?"

"Guy on the steps," Quark waddled along.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Guy on the steps." Quark let out a bellow for Dax dogging Anar pretending he didn't notice her as he checked the scattered bodies of security officers commingled among the civilians. "Over here! This is the one!"

Dax cringed with the sound of Quark's call wishing he'd try to cultivate a little common sense to go along with his savvy business acumen. Garak was no better, that enduring Cardassian curiosity unable to keep him away. Who confused her was the Bajoran officer. Guilty, he should have run. Innocent, he should have surrendered his rifle. He did neither, as if her presence didn't matter, and he knew she was there.

"Watch him, he's a slick one," Quark warned Anar circumventing Dax to have a look over the unconscious officer. "A knock in the head and he still came up fighting. So we knocked him again."

"You're sure this is him?" Anar kept his head bent over the Bajoran. 

"Excuse me if I didn't take a picture. Yes, it's him. Ask Garak. He's the one with the photographic memory if you don't believe me."

"I wish you hadn't reminded me of that," Anar sighed, trying to figure out a gracious exit as it was. "You said there was another one?"

"Guy on the steps," Quark nodded.

"Guy on the steps…" Anar was sure Quark meant something by that. Ferengi always meant something.

"The one with you," Quark gave him a clout in the arm. "Last night. I told you I never forget a face. It was him. The big guy. He's over there…past the stairs. You'll remember him when you see him -- if you don't, I do."

Oh, Anar remembered the big guy on the stairs with him last night. Dak'jar. His sergeant.

"Okay, I'll prove it to you," Quark offered as Anar stood up. "Him or not him?" he petitioned Garak winking and blinking down on the security officer like he had never saw him before in his life.

"Why, Commander," Garak breathed just the opposite to Dax, "unless I'm mistaken, I believe that's our luncheon friend from today. You recall, the officer you requested Julian's assistance in reviewing his psychological profile…I'm sorry, I hadn't really noticed…" he glanced up with the interesting notice of Anar just walking away.

"So much for Julian's analysis," Dax agreed.

"Oh, yes," Garak watched the vanishing back of Anar moving on in his search for Gul Dukat's second assailant. "Interesting, I must say. Very."

"A little, too," Dax promised. "Stay here the both of you. Don't move."

"Oh, we won't," Garak swore. "No, we won't."

"Captain?" Dax kept her smile in her voice and herself firmly positioned for a possible strike as she followed Anar stooping to check the body of another fallen security guard. "Your attention is appreciated, however Captain Sisko's instructions are firm…"

"You want your rifle," Anar replied.

"Actually…" Dax paused, realizing something else about him beyond his white hair. She hadn't yet seen his face. Only in a flash when he first went by her and she noticed he seemed to be older than one would expect of a Special Forces officer. He was older. He was also quite clearly hiding his face. Keeping it turned when it wasn't bent. Not only away from her. But from Quark. Garak. "Captain, could you turn around?"

"My child," Anar sighed, signing off from verifying with his son if he had located Dak'jar, which Sian had. Injured, and whom Anar promptly instructed his son to kill without mercy. "Don't you think if I wished to kill you, I would have by now?"

The blast from Sian's phaser rifle in the not too distant distance caught the Trill's attention just long enough. Anar was up and Dax had a fist striking her in the face, not a disruptor striking her in the chest. She saw Worf's head cresting the newly panicked crowd as the surprising power behind the Bajoran's punch knocked her to her knees.

"WORF!" the voice was Benjamin's. So was the hand reaching to pull her to her feet.

"He's an older man," Dax collected her shaken senses. "White hair…"

"Yes, we saw him," Sisko assured. "Where's Dukat?"

"At the bar. Go ahead. I'm fine, really…Benjamin," she said as he hesitated, "I know what he looks like."

"Yes, all right. Odo, go with her -- " Sisko hesitated again, briefly with Martok. "Fine, go with them -- but, General! I want that man alive. Bashir!" he hammered his com badge.

"Right behind you…" Bashir answered. "I started at the stairs, I saw you…"

"Dukat's at the bar," Sisko directed him.

"Right," Bashir took off.

"Chief!" Sisko looked around, finding O'Brien already working his way back to him.

"You know who that was? That was the guy in the dining room -- I'm telling you that was the guy in the dining room. The one with the disruptor -- white hair! It just clicked!"

Sisko stared at him.

"White hair," O'Brien tugged on his dirty-blond locks. "I knew there was something odd about him, it just didn't connect what."

"Check on Dukat," Sisko propelled him towards the bar, and he was gone after Dax, Worf, Odo, Martok_._

"Right," O'Brien threw up his hands. "'Check on Dukat.' All right, fine. I'll check on Dukat."

__

"What about Dukat?" Damar's leer was waiting for him two steps back into the crowd.

O'Brien looked at him. "Someone beat you to it."

Damar had to think about that.

"He's dead," O'Brien predicted. "Can I get by now?"

"By all means!" Damar gestured.

CHAPTER SIX

"Friend of yours?" Bashir passed Quark and Garak motionless like two statues over the body of a Special Forces officer to dash past Kira grabbing for him. "Dukat. Yes, I know, that's where I'm headed. See if you can locate Pfrann. From the looks of that blood trail he may need a donor -- unless, of course, Pfrann's with him -- "

"No, he isn't with him!" Kira shouted angrily after him for some reason. He also missed her aggravated look around. "Maybe he is with him, I don't know." she glared at Garak and Quark. "What are you doing?"

"Yes…" Garak answered. "Well, this would be one of Gul Dukat's assailants -- "

"We're guarding him," Quark grabbed the phaser rifle.

"No, I'm guarding him," Garak took the rifle back.

"He's dead!" Kira snapped.

"Dead?" Garak blinked. "Really." He looked down on the Bajoran's cruelly discolored face with its sightless blank eyes. "Why, that's true he is."

"Oh!" Kira stalked off on a hobbling gate after Bashir.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Quark asked.

"I don't know…" Garak stared from the Bajoran into the crowd fighting to flee from whoever had fired the phaser and the team of station security determined to keep them corralled. "Possibly…Possibly not."

"The bar?" Quark said.

"Yes…" Garak agreed. "Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking."

"Who was that?" Leeta asked Janice frowning concerned after Anar.

"I don't know," Janice shook her head.

"Oh. Just curious." Leeta bit her lip watching Janice applying a fresh napkin to Anon's wound. "Is he still all right?"

"He needs help now. I wish Commander Dax would just come back. The security guard is only trying to help."

Leeta nodded. "If Rom were here he could effect one of those transports -- "

"Rom's here," Rom gasped onto the scene out of breath. "Sorry, but the crowd, wow, everybody just suddenly went crazy -- Julian here?"

"No!" Leeta stamped her foot. "You were one who was supposed to find him."

"Um…" Rom said. "Well, he's here somewhere. We kind of got swallowed up -- that doesn't look to good," he mentioned to Janice.

"Do you know how to call for an emergency transport?" she asked.

"Um…You mean over Quark's system? Yup. I know it can be done -- it's just -- " he cringed from Leeta.

"Just don't stand there!"

"We're at Red Alert," Rom reminded her. "That's all those flashing lights and alarms and yup, okay, let me see what I can do…" he scurried around the bar for the console.

"He can do it," Leeta promised, biting her lip again, her curiosity really getting the better of her about this Doctor Lange and Dukat's son. "Is he your boyfriend?" 

"Yes," Janice nodded.

Leeta worked on what to do with the confession. "Well, that's okay," she decided with a shrug and a pat of Janice's arm. "I won't say anything -- Rom either._ Quark_," she sneered. "I don't even think Quark even noticed. Garak either. The two of them. They like everyone to think they know _everything_ that goes on around here, but they don't.They couldn't see it if it was in front of their face --" she blinked into the wild and confused eyes of Pfrann shoving his way between her and Janice for his brother.

"What happened? Janice, what happened!" he insisted.

"Hey!" Leeta gave Pfrann a sharp whack on the top of his head. "Don't be hollering at her!"

His brother wasn't the only one who sometimes wondered if their father's masochistic tendencies didn't outweigh his sadistic with his fascination with her species. Physically smoother in appearance than the Cardassian and therefore arguably appealing to the Cardassian esthetic senses, the Bajorans were as crazy as any Klingon Pfrann had ever met.

"Leeta, it's all right," Janice quieter her. "He's just upset."

"Of course I'm upset," Pfrann snarled. "Anon has a knife in his stomach! You're not upset?"

"Yes, I'm upset," Janice assured him calmly. "But Anon needs help. Rom's trying to effect a transport -- "

"Transport -- " It clicked. Pfrann yanked his field control unit out from under his tunic. Janice glanced at the palm-size instrument that looked like a sand beetle. It was very similar to what Anon had used to disable her security tag.

"Can you help him?" she agreed excitedly.

"No, but Tan can," Pfrann desperately attempted to raise a communication link to his ship. "I'm sorry -- I wasn't thinking -- I didn't mean to yell -- "

"I know," Janice smiled. "Just try to relax."

"I can't relax," he shook the field unit in her face. "This would never happen to me. Never! Fields! Shields! All over the station! A thousand security -- it didn't stop a knife. No! It didn't stop anything." He took a breath.

"Try Tan again," Janice encouraged.

"I'm trying. It's not working …this is ridiculous," he jumped up. "We'll just take him -- I'll carry him -- "

"You can't carry him -- "

"I can carry him!"

"No, you can't," Janice grabbed him by the hem of his tunic. "Pfrann, Anon's hurt and I'm not going to let you hurt him more."

"Fine, he can carry him," Pfrann's fist clouted the powerful giant Morn. "Don't tell me he can't. He can carry the three of us."

"Unnecessary, but I can understand the reasoning," Bashir excused his way by Pfrann to have a look at Dukat.

Startled, Pfrann stepped clumsily away, fumbling to press his field unit into Leeta's hands so the Federation doctor wouldn't see. She took it. He looked at her. It wasn't loyalty to his father that found her protecting his son. None of them were loyal; it had to be something else. Blackmail. Bribery. He glanced at Janice crouched at his brother's feet. She knew. The Bajoran knew. "Betray them and I'll kill you," Pfrann promised Leeta.

"Don't be such a jerk," Leeta tucked his field unit down inside the extensive cleavage of her chest. 

Pfrann shook himself alert with a snap. "I'll want it later."

Leeta snorted. "You and how many others."

He groaned. "No, the field unit. I'll want the field unit later -- it's mine."

She looked at him. "I know it's yours. What's the matter with you?"

"Nothing," he insisted. "Just give it to me later -- the field unit."

Leeta eyed him. From him, her cleavage and back to him. "How old are you?"

"Seventeen!" Pfrann pushed her out of his way to see what Bashir was doing with his brother.

"Old enough, I guess," Leeta shrugged to Rom.

"Um, yup," Rom agreed. "Like…you know. Like father, like son."

"Finally," Janice sighed, relieved to see Bashir. "It's his iliac artery. I don't think it's severed, but I know it's involved."

"Left common…about halfway," Bashir quickly scanned Anon. "The knife penetrated the internal oblique pinching the artery and muscle back towards the iliac crest -- that explains the bubbling. The reaction of the abdominal compression would force the initial hemorrhage down the knife and out -- it's quite long, though blunted. Some sort of serving knife?"

"I don't know…" Janice shook her head.

"And who cares?" Pfrann snapped. "Long, short, blunt, sharp! It has to come out!" 

"Yes, it does…" Bashir applied a hypospray to Dukat's throat with a smile for Janice. "Just a little generic boost to his oxygen -- you can get up. The knife's not going to move."

"I wasn't sure."

"No, but he is. Come on," Pfrann's arm clasped around her shoulders, grateful and apologetic. "I'm sorry. Really. I'm not angry with you."

"I understand that," Janice promised. "Of course I understand."

"Quite," Bashir added his understanding. "Apologies aren't necessary, though thank you certainly is appropriate. Doctor Lange deserves an _A_ for a lot more than effort. There is only so much the artery muscle can do to impede the flow. Not removing the knife, and sitting him down to ease the demand for blood, forced added compression of the abdomen, constricting the blood flow considerably."

That's not what O'Brien saw coming up behind Kira with Damar. No constricted blood flow. No anything except the hemorrhage covering Lange from her face to her feet.

"Jeez…" he was past Kira and grabbing Janice away from Pfrann. "Are you all right? You're sure?" The kid was shaking like a leaf, her lips blue with fright. Who could blame her. The place looked like a slaughterhouse. Bodies all over. People crying and screaming. "It's okay," O'Brien consoled her. "Everything's all right. It's over."

"It's Dukat!" Kira's arm flailing in disgust after O'Brien caught Damar in the chest. "What are you looking at?"

"Everything, Major," he promised. "Everything. And how very little, everything has changed."

"You can say that again," Kira hobbled up to Bashir. "Status?"

"Nothing that a little surgery and a day or two in bed won't cure," Bashir packed up his field kit, activating his com badge. "Emergency medical beam out, Doctor Bashir and party of two -- make that three," he nodded to Damar. "Gul and Sentinel Dukat and Legate Damar -- I need a vascular team stat. Surgical suite now."

Anon was gone. Janice clung to O'Brien feeling herself sway and the strength of his chest and arms, large and powerful like Anon's.

"I've got you," O'Brien assured. "I've got you."

"It was all I could think of to do…" Janice clutched Kira's hand smoothing her hair. "I knew what to do, but I still felt so helpless."

"I don't know why," Kira shook her head. "You heard Bashir. You were great. Steady hand, cool head. You can't ask for more than that. No one can."

"Hm," Janice smiled over O'Brien's shoulder at Morn. "I'm making your uniform wet."

O'Brien chuckled. "It's been wet plenty of times before."

"You were great."

"Me? What did I do?"

"Morn," Janice nodded. "Cool head. Steady hand. Anon owes you his life. We all do."

"_Morn?_" Kira questioned the mute, cute, lumbering Morn swelling with pride and presenting her with his phaser rifle; she took it. "Morn."

"And Leeta," Janice nodded. "Rom. Garak. I never could have held him up, Garak. Never."

"The pleasure was all mine, my dear," Garak cooed. "As I explained."

Yeah, well, before it got any deeper than the blood already there, O'Brien had this idea in his mind about just getting the kid the heck out of there.

"You're not taking her anywhere," Kira's pleasant smile for Janice masked a behind-the-scene painful gouge of her fingers in O'Brien left kidney.

"What the heck are you doing?" O'Brien glared. "I'm taking the kid out of here now. End of story. No _line._ Infirmary. Temple -- are you sure you're all right?"

"I'm fine," Janice said.

"You look it," O'Brien nodded. Like he said. Shaking like a leaf. Frightened half to death. If she was lucky she had a leg under her; which she didn't. "Don't worry about it. Two minutes you'll be out of here and in your quarters -- less than two," he activated his com badge. "Emergency beam out -- "

"Cancel that!" Kira slammed hers.

"What's the hell is the matter with you?" O'Brien sputtered. "She's a diplomat!"

"I know who she is," Kira flung the phaser rifle to Garak. "Get her out of here. You!" she seized Leeta, spinning her toward him. "Go with him."

"Huh?" O'Brien said. "Now, wait a minute -- Wait a minute!" he barked, holding Garak and give-him-a-break Leeta off. "They're changing their clothes! We're fighting ghosts. Got that? Ghosts!"

"I know that!" 

O'Brien stared at her.

"What do you think I would do?" Kira snapped. The tricks of the trade still the same, the names of the players were all that had changed. "Come on," she disengaged Janice from O'Brien's grasp. "No, you don't have to wait in line, but I can't effect a beam out. We need to reserve that for medical -- "

"Hold it!" O'Brien roared. 

Kira's eyes flashed black. Dax was right in her erecting an immediate protective shield around Lange. Maybe it was drawn from Ziyal; she didn't know. The nausea filling her stomach when Rom reported Anon was injured told her it might be. She'd preferred to think it was her ankle even though she was conscious of the nagging fear in the back of her mind that she was somehow killing Dukat's children one by one. She wasn't. Who was, were Bajorans. Along with killing everyone else's including their own. That was wrong. They were supposed to be protecting the station from Damar. Martok. 

__

"Sisko to Major Kira!" the Captain's burning voice interrupted over her com badge. He was canceling his call a moment later, before she had a chance to respond. The Chief's com badge came alive. _"First level Promenade, on the double. We have a hostage situation -- take it slow. It's a child."_

O'Brien bolted for the entrance. Kira hit her com badge. "Major Kira to Captain Sisko -- "

__

"It's all right, Major. Maintain your position. There's enough of us."

"Understood."

"The holosuites?" Leeta thought of when Kira signed off to consider what now to do about Lange.

"No, you can't go through the holosuites," Kira reactivated her com badge. "Priority transport for Doctor Lange and escort to quarters."

"Thank you," Garak exhaled. "I must say I agree with Chief O'Brien, Major. Doctor Lange is in no condition to wander the Promenade, even if we weren't at war with one another."

"Just stay with her," Kira suggested. "Someone from security will be there to relieve you as soon as they can."

"Oh, we will," Leeta blew Rom a kiss goodbye. 

"Hostage?" Kira went from thinking about some organized extreme left-wing outfit to suicidal desperadoes penetrating an enemy camp. If you got out, you got out. If you didn't, you took as many of them with you as you could. She was close. Sometimes there was just that one determined to get out of there.

Anar was aware as he ran for his life through a crowd that seemed to part that he was running less for his life and the life of his son than he was for the sons of the defiler Dukat and the daughter of a man he didn't even know. Less for preserving the sanctity of Shakaar and sparing him the scandal and embarrassment of his uncle's apprehension than he was for Bajor. Prophets false or true were on his side. Beyond the widening path of figures was the sweeping vision of a bridge. Broad and broken. Her multi-levels clinging to each other for support. Anar jumped up the steps for the causeway to Quark's second level, the bright lights of phaser fire streaking over his head and past him; a Klingon growl close to closing in. It was an ambitious effort on both their parts. Visions of bridges suddenly cleared from Anar's eyes when he realized he was running straight for the section of connecting levels he had vaporized out from under Sisko. Thirty feet across to the next surviving section was out of the question unless he had wings. Behind him was security. It was either left over the rails in an attempt to cut back for the causeway, or right over the rails for the heart of the main dining area that security had just cleared for emergency medical triage and evac of the second level. 

He did not have wings; he prayed Sisko had a heart. He whirled back, firing his phaser rifle set for disruption in rapid bursts as he opted to cut the hard right for the main dining section; the Klingon Worf grappling to catch his ankles as he vaulted over the rail.

Worf missed. They were even. Anar had missed him and the second Klingon accompanying him, General Martok. Odo caught one of the strikes in his chest. He saw it coming. There was no time to avoid it. Little he could do other than to allow his matter to disassociate of its own accord in an effort to displace the violent force of energy attempting to displace him. It was a seven; close enough. Powerful enough to crush his transmuting humanoid form back against the rail; the disrupted pulse imploding deep within his resistance to spread through and exit in crackling ribbons of electricity. He was fine after a few seconds, a distant memory of acid indigestion crossing his mind. The security officer immediately behind him, momentarily grateful to find himself shielded by a Changeling that he likely pledged his allegiance to the Dominion on the spot, was electrocuted. 

"Stand down!" Sisko issued a general order on his way up through the ranks directing security to hold firm on the bridge to prevent the intruder from backtracking. "Clear shot, gentlemen, only, clear shot," he exchanged a nod of understanding and appreciation with Odo, knowing the Constable would have done more if he could.

"Sorry about that," Odo apologized for the officer's death anyway even though they didn't need any more converts to the Dominion's cause. 

"The only way out is the front door," Dax gasped for breath as Benjamin caught up to her.

So there was and there were two ways to reach it. Sisko was over the rails to the left and heading for the causeway with a shout for Worf and Martok.

"It'll be a race," Dax followed knowing it was one Benjamin intended to win. 

He did indeed. "Clear the area," Sisko barked over his com badge to security out on the second level of the Promenade. "Get those people out of the way now."

"How many did we lose?"

Two, perhaps three. Sisko hadn't stop to count. There would be time for that later.

"He's desperate," Dax agreed, not quite sure how she managed to be so lucky other than possibly the intruder's lingering delay over the bodies of the fallen security officers downstairs gave him time to formulate his escape route. 

"He's more than that," Sisko assured.

"Looking for someone perhaps?" she frowned. Sisko's head wrenched around to her. "An idea," she shrugged. 

"I'm sure you'll tell us what," Odo grunted.

"Motherless targ," Martok cursed in Klingon as Worf came away empty-handed. "He knows you will not fire for fear of hitting the wounded."

"Neither will you," Worf caught the phaser rifle.

"Then we go left," Martok agreed with Sisko's shout.

"We go left," Worf assured. He caught up with the Captain at the entrance to the Promenade, easily sixty meters too late to trap the intruder inside the bar. A distance shortened considerably when the Bajoran sacrificed much of his valuable head start to cut a diagonal path, crossing in front of them.

"He is insane," Worf reacted, though where exactly the Bajoran would have gone with his head start other than into one of the shops was unknown. The immediate turbolifts and airlocks were locked out of use to minimize his options. He seemed to know that instinctively; he didn't stop to even try them.

"He's has a plan," Dax decided.

"Living shields," Sisko promised as the Bajoran raced straight into the arms of spectators and patrons being shoved out of the way by security. "I said to clear the area!" he bellowed at the Task Leader approaching on the run. "Not left! Right! The area!" he fired his disruptor up over the heads of the crowd at the ceiling to panic those people out of the way; up against the walls and back inside those shops now. Had the Bajoran turned and fired back on them in response Sisko would have assumed the utter and complete responsibility for anyone harmed in the return fire right down to the smallest scratch.

The Bajoran didn't. He ran, firing straight ahead into the parting sea, moving them out the way his way; by killing them. Plan? He had no plan. He had a goal. The way to achieve that goal formulated _as_ he ran. Decisions made and aborted in split seconds. Calculating the actions of his pursuers ahead of them to stay ahead of them. Cold, the bloodless officer _was _an officer; Sisko knew that. That was no farmer who took up arms joining some local militant group. Highly trained and highly skilled, the cloak the man wore to cover his soul reeked to Sisko of Shakaar's Special Forces, nothing less. By his age alone, ranking. By his actions, a leader. One who surrendered his phaser rifle back in time on that dining platform, centuries ago now. Turning to the officer behind him to secure his. Those were the actions and words of a commanding officer speaking for himself and his subordinate to the enemy. Arrogance pressed the trigger of the disruptor bringing that platform down around Sisko and his men. Determination, not desperation pressed the trigger now. A leader? Quite possibly_ the_ leader. Shakaar himself would be hard put to convince Sisko otherwise. "Move! Move! Move!" he directed Worf and Odo across the Promenade and Dax to stay left while he aimed for the middle. 

"Your victims' survival must be earned, targ!" Martok emerged from Quark's to howl after the fleeing coward. "But so must be your victory!"

"General, no!" Sisko barked.

"Concern yourself with your crowd," Martok muttered, "leave him to me…That will be the day I run from someone's back!" he shouted above the screams of the masses. "At your side, I am at your side!" 

"Well, at least we don't need a bull horn," Dax agreed, trying to anticipate the movements of the crowd. "Back! Just stay back! Against the wall!"

"Get ready to take him…" Martok nodded to Sisko.

He was ready. Martok halted suddenly, thrusting his arms into the air, waving his phaser rifle. "Turn and fight, Bajoran! The son of Dukat has already tasted the blood of Martok, are you any less of man than he?"

That was almost a little too difficult for Anar to resist. He needed a rest, to rest he needed a diversion. "What the hell," he succumbed to the words of his Federation background, activating his holographic implant, fumbling with the Cardassian field unit he pulled out from inside his sweat-drenched shirt. "Distortion by thirty meters…that should do it." Sisko and his crew weren't too much farther behind him than that, despite the Klingon's lung power. Anar cut the power level of his rifle back to three and the beam to narrow width as he whirled around, firing from behind a shield of a hundred images of himself emerging from inside each other in a straight line down the Promenade. The last one appearing right at the tip of Martok's boots, not a second after the stream of phaser fire neatly sliced the rifle out of the General's hand. It was enough to confuse the optic nerve of most beings. Blind some of them momentarily as the brain scrambled to assimilate the images. Humans were no exceptions. Neither were Klingons nor Trills. The Changeling? Prefect Dukat's Constable Odo would have to be moderately impressed by the trick even if he didn't want to admit it.

It didn't matter to Anar what Odo cared to admit or didn't. The holographic projection was there and gone in seconds. The features far too visually distorted for the Changeling or anyone to be able to identify Anar as anyone other than an older man with white hair wearing a yellow jumpsuit. Anar was inside the minimally comforting security of a narrow door frame of some shop. Noting his location and eyeing the Promenade rail several feet in front of him. Tying not to think about just how far down it might actually be to the first level while Martok battled the spots in front of his eyes.

"Good shot," Dax voiced Benjamin's thinking of a trained and highly skilled adversary. "Or maybe not," she checked that. Actually it didn't make any sense as to why the Bajoran didn't kill Martok from behind his shield of blinding images. 

The potential of answers raised a few questions, yes. None of which Sisko cared to address at the moment. Only one thing on his mind. "Odo…" he hailed him over his com badge.

__

"He's in the doorway," Odo reported. _"Forty meters, no more. Sorry, but that's about all I had time to see."_

Forty meters. It was gift. This close and still just that far. He had to have something on his mind. "Line up," Sisko ordered.

__

"Beg your pardon?"

"Line up," Sisko jerked Dax up next to him. "Mister Worf."

"We've got it," Odo took his place in line; the five of them abreast. "Somewhat unnecessary…"

"If I thought he would stop with you, Constable," Sisko assured, "I'd tell you to go for it."

"Point," Odo agreed. "Now what?"

"Captain!" Sisko barked for the officer's attention. "Unconditional surrender is the offer, there will be no other. Choices died the moment you opened fire, not here!" 

"Don't answer him," Anar shook his head at himself, changing his mind. "Wrong. Answer him if you want to get to that railing…A reasonable presumption, Captain, though wrong," he activated his field unit, talking into it. Out of breath and hoarse from trying to catch his breath the voice distortion was only necessary for the computer logs sure to be reviewed. "As reasonable as mine. I said you were Cardassian, remember?"

Oh, Sisko remembered as clearly as he could hear the Chief saying "I'm trying" while trying to clean the distortion to get a clear pattern of 'the noise' as he was also sure to call it.

"And how Cardassian of you," Anar supplied them with as much data as they cared to analyze, "not to admit defeat when defeat -- is at your feet," he chuckled. "The tip of your boots. Why didn't the intruder kill Martok? Or the Trill wife of the Klingon Worf when he had no guilt about killing others? It doesn't make any sense. When is arrogance not arrogance but instead something else -- " he steeled himself in preparation for the plunge to his life or his death. "Such as suspicion? To tell you the truth, I'm not quite sure myself. Something to do with the choice of destroying or preserving the present to destroy or protect future's past. Which choice would you choose?" he dropped the field unit in the doorway rather than risk ending up wearing it inside the flesh and bones of his chest as opposed to only his jumpsuit.

The phaser he had throughout his free fall over the railing. Losing it as he tucked into a roll to land on the tips of his feet and immediately over onto his chest on the level below; he still didn't know just how far down it was. He had no idea where the child came from. He saw the crowd being herded by security and each other back into the airlock as he jumped, noting he was closer to the security office than he had calculated. That was the good news. The bad news was now down, he had to get up before security satisfied by his death, realized he was alive. He was alive. His last steps along the road to freedom came by way of the Prophets, or she came of her own accord. 

"The ravings of a madman," Worf proclaimed as the intruder surprised them once again with his sudden decision to vault for the rail and his death.

"A premature assumption, Mister Worf." Sisko was at the rail barking for security to keep the crowd back and proceed with caution. He had no idea why other than suicide didn't fit the man's profile. The Bajoran officer had to think he could get out of it alive AND free. The fact that he was on his chest rather than his back indicated he had misjudged the distance, falling into a tumbling somersault or missing the opportunity completely to 'tuck and roll'. The phaser rifle resting on the floor several feet away added to Sisko's elation that part of the plan anyway had gone awry. Still…there was something about the silent figure on the floor he didn't quite trust. He released the railing bolting for the stairs. Behind him, he heard Worf shout the intruder was alive and Dax screaming to security something about keeping the crowd back.

"It's a child," Dax was there when Sisko whirled back from descending the stairs. "Bajoran. Maybe there's a chance…" Benjamin passed her halfway to the bottom of the staircase, calling for Kira over his com badge.

"Her ankle's fractured!" Dax reminded. Benjamin stared at her again, canceled the call and hailed O'Brien instead.

"Give your best," Sisko ordered her, halting Martok in his tracks before he uttered so much as a growl.

"Right," Dax's hands were colder than their normal cool, motioning for security to retreat slowly -- all but the Task Leader Benjamin had by the breast of his uniform. 

"Where did those people come from!"

"The airlock," Odo grunted. "It's the local shuttle. They probably just got the order that it was all right to disembark." But then the riot down the other end at Quark's was over with. Had been for five minutes or so before this started. Why keep two hundred people bottlenecked in an airlock any longer than necessary? After forty minutes or so it did start to become uncomfortable and hot despite the life support systems.

"Forty minutes," Worf commented. "It does not seem possible."

"That's all," Odo nodded. Forty minutes since the first disruptor streaked across Quark's. The shuttle must have docked just prior to Red Alert with just enough time between docking and Red Alert for her passengers to disembark to find themselves moments later sealed in the airlock.

"Not saying someone didn't jump the gun," he assured Sisko before his uniform ended twisted in the Captain's fist. "Saying the Bajoran's timing's almost uncanny."

"Sheer luck!" Sisko released the Task Leader with a sputter. "Damn sheer luck!"

"If you say so." Odo thought back to those 'ravings of a madman'. "He has more than a goal, he has a mission." Sisko looked at him, he nodded. "That's not Maquis. We're dealing with some religious sect -- possibly Winn." He was also close. Unfortunately, like Major Kira, Odo didn't know where he started out right and ended up wrong, or vice versa.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Anar knew the child was Bajoran before he grabbed her, hearing her mother scream when for whatever reasons her daughter was possessed to break away from the protection of her mother's hand, darting past the startled legs of security to have a look over the man lying on the floor.

"She's five years old! Oh, please! She's only five years old!" the mother was taken to sobbing and screaming her child's age as if that would somehow detour a madman. 

"What is your name, child?" Anar verified as he clutched the little girl to him; his hand twisting her head to the side so he could talk in her ear; her body turned to face her audience.

"Hatrem Ranit," she replied. "I thought you were hurt."

"Is that why you ran?"

She shrugged. "Are you going to hurt me? That's what my mother thinks."

"No, I'm not going to hurt you, Hatrem," he promised. "But we can't tell anyone that. It has to be our secret."

"Okay," she agreed.

"That was easy," Anar had to chuckle. "Hasn't your mother ever told you to be wary of strangers?"

She shrugged again. "You look like someone."

Anar winced. With a little luck the child meant someone benign like her grandfather. Anyone's grandfather. She couldn't possibly have seen his face. "Your youth plays tricks, little one. I look like no one."

"A Prophet," she said and he almost dropped her. "Can't you see the Prophets? I thought everyone could."

"Yes, I can see them," was all Anar said as far as that. "Now, Hatrem, tell me, can you see the pretty lady with the dark hair -- the one in the yellow uniform like mine?"

"Yes. Who's she talking to?"

"Her Captain," Anar smiled. "Over her communicator. You probably can't see it, but it's on her shirt."

"I see something on her shirt…"

He could see the child's eyes squint and feel her cheek move under his hand. He chuckled again, enamored of her innocence and in danger of becoming distracted. "Shhhh…" he quieted her. "It's not important, less what she's saying. It's what we want."

"What do we want?"

"Our phaser. Tell her that for us."

The child did and the Trill stopped where she was about ten or so meters away from them even though she had to know that would be the bargain on the table; the only bargain on the table.

"She's not doing anything," Hatrem said, the seconds hours to one of her age.

"Or I'll twist your head and snap your neck," Anar agreed. The child's eye looked at him out from the corner of its socket. "Just tell her that for me, please."

"Or I'll twist your head and snap your neck," Hatrem repeated verbatim. It was close enough. The Trill got the message.

"I think it's less of a question of can he," Dax reported to Benjamin over her open com as she moved to secure the phaser rifle, "than will he."

__

"Understood," Benjamin said. _"Give him the phaser."_

"So much for negotiations," Dax agreed, not quite sure what she would say to the intruder anyway other than: "Take me. With the phaser," she added for the terrorist's understanding watching her through the child's eyes.

"No, we have a better idea," Hatrem held out her arms. "We want you to give the phaser to me."

"It's like some bizarre ventriloquist dummy," O'Brien muttered in Sisko's ear.

"Just very much alive, Chief," he replied. "Very much alive -- do what he asks, Commander." he instructed Dax.

"Definitely so much for negotiations," Dax smiled at the child.

"To the con -- con," she countered, stumbling over the word contrary, "you'll be that much closer to me."

"That's very true," Dax carefully set the phaser rifle across the child's outstretched arms. She was not surprised when the Bajoran shifted the little girl to help support the rifle.

"Got it?" the child checked with her captor. _That_ surprised Dax a little.

"Yes, I have it," Anar promised in her ear.

"Okay…now I have to push the buttons," the child explained to Dax. "This one?"

"That's the one," Anar agreed. "Now, go up a row…"

"Okay…" the child was biting her tongue, focused on her task. "This one?"

"Yes, that's the one."

"This is sick," O'Brien chafed at the bit. "This is sick…First he's got her talking for him, now he has her punching out phaser settings."

"It is unusual," Worf frowned.

"Do you think he knows her?" O'Brien insisted to Sisko. "If that were Molly she'd be crying for her mother -- or me."

Apparently something Sisko was thinking about also. "Commander…"

"Who's that?" the little girl glanced up from adjusting the beam setting.

"Captain Sisko," Dax smiled. "Don't be alarmed, he's just reading my mind." She watched the child react to the voice behind her, listening very carefully before repeating the words.

"Can you explain?"

"Yes, I can. Do you know the man who's holding you?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

Dax didn't read any reaction on the child's face as if the man were talking for her, but what exactly that meant or proved, she wasn't sure. "Anything else?" she smiled.

"Hatrem Ranit," the child nodded after listening. "My name is Hatrem Ranit. So you know who I am when you kill me, who you've killed."

"Okay!" O'Brien threw up his hands. "I'm convinced! She's innocent!"

"Chief!" Sisko reminded sharply, trying to listen to Dax.

"No one's going to kill anyone," Dax promised. "I'm here to help, not hurt. Tell me what you want me to do now."

"Why don't we take a walk?" the Bajoran spoke for himself.

"Turbolift?" Dax guessed.

"Just walk," he directed.

So they walked. Cautiously. Dax appreciated how it was difficult for the officer to keep eyes everywhere, on everything at the same time. It was made a little easier by keeping the child's hand squeezed around the trigger.

"Stay back," Hatrem had to warn security only once.

"Definitely," Dax supported that request remembering the power of the Bajoran's fist in her face and noting the strong muscles in the arms holding the child. He wasn't a heavy man, perhaps her size and height. Sweating profusely at one point from the rigors of his race, his breathing now was reasonably normal. Excellent physical condition crossed her mind, alongside his athletic ability. It was plausible he was younger than the shock of white hair suggested. She had yet to see his face. He held and carried the child high. Intentional, obvious, still hiding his face, the question remained why. An easily identifying mark or scarring perhaps, like one-eyed General Martok?

The flesh of the Bajoran's throat, arms and hands that Dax could see appeared normal, healthy and deeply suntanned. He did spend a great deal of his time outside in the warmth of a sunny climate, though she was in agreement with Benjamin. This was not a farmer -- or maybe he was. Something he did was wearing to the hands. Shifting the child to ensure his control over her hand he clutched around the trigger, the soft underside of the Bajoran's fingers and hand were callused and marked with tiny scratches. Some old, some within the last few days. Traveling. Dax nodded to herself. Whatever he did, he did not do while traveling. The point that he may have been traveling for the past few days put him far away from DS9 and Bajor Prime. A time frame that alluded if his intended target was Dukat, rather than random, this man had information days before Benjamin. Dax dismissed the implication of Federation leaks or Shakaar's involvement along with the target being Dukat. It had to be random. Or it had to be Damar. Or possibly Doctor Lange.

__

It was Damar. Dax decided. It wasn't random. That's why he didn't kill her, Lange, Dukat, Quark or any of them. He had a specific target. Legate Damar. It wasn't the conference. The assassination of the Cardassian Emperor would catapult the Union into chaos. Who would want that? Who would hire him? Or his men? She tried not to think about the fact that who the Bajoran terrorist also did not kill was General Martok. 

"Turbolift?" O'Brien paused in his pacing.

Sisko was shaking his head watching the Bajoran back carefully away from the center of the Promenade.

"Well, he obviously wasn't just going to hand the kid over," O'Brien said. "He's got to be somewhere a little more _conducive_ to getting out of here."

"The turbolift," Worf agreed, anticipating they would be negotiating for Jadzia's release very shortly, rather than some child. "She is far more valuable to him."

"Exactly," O'Brien nodded. "The kid he needed to give himself an edge. No one's going to risk a child. It's not going to happen."

"That's been his MO since the beginning," Odo grunted. "Hostages. In a word. Living shields as the Captain said."

So Sisko had. Now he was thinking something else. Where? A turbolift to where? There was no way out of there. Not off the station, anywhere. At some point the officer was going to have to break away again. Surrender his hostages in a renewed effort to get where?

"Not anywhere easily," Odo was agreeing. Knowing they'd take the station apart looking for him, as big as it was.

"Well, they're somewhere," O'Brien snorted, shy of proposing some secret underground movement living and plotting in the bowels of the old ore bays.

"Yes," Odo was as watchful as the Captain just watching each step the Bajoran took taking him one step further way. "They're in the crowd. This one's going to have a hard time resuming his secret identify of no one…what?" he said to Sisko's head snapping to look at him.

"Your office, Constable," Sisko's voice was as chilling as it was soft.

"Yes, well," Odo grunted, refraining from mentioning how they wanted the intruder there anyway, "it's a thought. Reasonable. From there you can get just about everywhere."

"Including off this station," Sisko assured. "Which will be over my dead body -- Worf!" he halted him as well as the Chief. "Extreme caution, gentlemen, that rule has not changed."

"Following you," Odo likewise agreed.

"Take a flight." Sisko's took his phaser rifle from him. "Something a little less conspicuous than a condor."

"On it." Odo settled for transforming to a simple blue bird flying high overhead. Moderately risky to attracting someone's attention, it was worth the gamble most attentions were riveted on the Bajoran; they were.

"All right, not the turbolift," Dax agreed as they passed it, knowing Benjamin had to be getting very itchy. She eyed the security office, an airlock and one of the main transporter pads coming up. They were starting to run out of options unless the intruder planned on stopping for something to eat, do a little shopping, or walking in circles. An airlock would be a convenient place to wait for a demanded shuttle -- that Benjamin would be on top of before the docking clamps were released. Unconditional surrender seemed too good to be true. It had to be the transporter pad. 

"Oh, look at the bird!" Hatrem pointed out what two thousand people failed to notice including her alert abductor. Dax's heart started to pound. If she couldn't convince herself there was a bird, she doubted if she could convince the Bajoran. 

"Bird?" Anar immediately searched the ceiling along the archways.

"It was just there," Hatrem's little head nodded under his hand.

"I…" Dax started to say and decided it was better to try going along. She just might find she had an opening to return the fist in her face if the intruder could be distracted. "Where?"

"Over by the arch," Hatrem pointed. "Can you see it?"

No, but she was looking. Dax smiled at the nearest puzzled security officer. "We're trying to find the bird."

He was either a very smart man, or Benjamin was communicating by telepathy. The security officer looked up and around for a second or two. "Sitting up on top of the pillar."

"Where is he?" Hatrem asked.

"Sitting on one of the pillars," Dax promised. "I'm sure he'll take off again -- "

"He?" the Bajoran interjected.

"Or she," Dax shrugged.

"It can't be a he?" Hatrem said.

"No, it can be a he," Anar assured. "A she or a one. That wasn't too smart of Sisko, Commander -- almost disappointing."

Dax was tempted to claim she had no idea what he meant. She opted for honesty. "Our main concern for the moment is getting the child safely away from you."

"You're in luck," Anar risked exposure to take full possession of the phaser rifle. "Hurting the innocent is also the farthest thing from my mind -- ."

"No, don't hurt the bird!" Hatrem gasped, screaming and twisting under his arm when he aimed to fire on the pillar. "Don't hurt the bird!"

"Shush, child," Anar tried quieting her. "I'm not going to hurt the bird -- it's not a bird."

"Well, what is it?" she demanded.

Dax knew the accusing, confused look in the child's eyes trying to listen to the man whispering in her ear, having been both a mother and a father during her lifetimes.

"A Changeling," Anar promised. "I'm not going to hurt him either. I just want him to land."

She had no idea what he meant. He could have told her it was a duck with three heads. "You can't ask him?"

"Tell him to get down here," Anar instructed Dax, cold, harsh, angrily. She eyed the rifle. They were six feet from the security office. "Don't make me do this to her."

"You don't have to do anything to her," Dax replied calmly. 

Anar debated a moment with a leading glance down the Promenade toward the transporter pad. "Have a better tomorrow," he bequeathed the Prophets' blessing on the little child. 

Dax abruptly had Hatrem in her arms. The Bajoran was through the security doors closing as Odo came in for dive landing, transmuting from bird to gel in an effort to slip his way through before they locked; they locked. With Odo on this side and the Bajoran on the other, already through the inner doors into Odo's office to immediately engage the added benefit of force field between him and the outer lobby by the time Sisko and the others came pounding up. 

"Not my day," Odo completed his transformation back to humanoid form for the entertainment of the little girl gasping behind him.

"Do that again!" 

"Perhaps later," Odo grunted with a nod for security to get a bipolar torch before the Captain rammed the doors open with his fist.

"Dax!" Benjamin detoured long enough from attempting such a feat to check on the perky little package in Dax's arms.

"She's all right," Dax reassured, smiling at the child all eyes for Odo. "You are, aren't you?"

"Yes," she nodded.

"Excellent job, Commander," Sisko gave Dax a hasty congratulatory pat on the back for a job she didn't feel she had too much say in getting done.

"I was thinking of the transporter pad."

"No," Sisko knew it was the security office and the obvious reasons why. Ability to access the stations systems and Red Alert. The Bajoran was transporting nowhere. Not off the station unless he could get those shields down. "Get her to Bashir." 

"Who's that?" Hatrem wondered as Benjamin whirled away from them. 

"Constable Odo?" Dax asked. "Or Captain Sisko?" 

"The Emissary?" the child said.

"Yes, that's him," Dax expected the wide-eyed blink but not the excited call.

"Emissary!"

Sisko groaned, hovering over the Chief at the control panels trying a little counter magic to sabotage the saboteur.

"That's okay, I've got it," O'Brien breathed heavily.

"Yes, child?" Sisko mustered his patience to answer Hatrem.

"Have a better tomorrow," she kissed his cheek with a blessing smile.

Sisko looked at Dax; Odo turned around from watching the Chief.

"Did the man tell you to say that?" Dax asked.

"Yes."

Dax felt the excited twitch of the child's foot against her hip; her continued fascination with Odo tinged with relief.

"You're not a bird."

"Yes, well, no," Odo agreed. "Why?" 

"A Changeling?"

"That's one word. God's another," he grunted, hearing and observing Commander Dax's sigh. "What?"

"Confirmation of trust?" Dax offered. "He told her you were a Changeling, not a bird."

"Yes, well," Odo eyed the babe in the woods as he believed they were occasionally referred to as. "We'll let it slide, due to the age."

"Easier said than done, Constable," Sisko replied, annoyed by the rapture on the child's face inspired by the salesmanship abilities of some cutthroat terrorist. 

"They seem to go hand in hand," Dax agreed.

"So they do. Bashir, Commander."

"And mommy," Dax promised Hatrem. "Let's go find mommy."

"Come on…" Anar played Odo's display like a keyboard instrument, hunting his way around Hawk's handiwork and the Red Alert close out to secure a communication link with Martok's Bird-of-Prey.

He had one. _"Identify."_ the universal translator requested.

"Negative to that, gentlemen," Anar moved to work on the shields. "The station is at Red Alert. I am having difficulty maintaining a link, can you assist me?"

__

"You must identify."

"Repeat," Anar requested.

He could hear the Klingon growl behind the translator's sedate drone. _"We are aware of the station's status. You must identify."_

"Martok," Anar shrugged. "Chancellor of the East, the Alpha, the Gamma. The Empire is in peril. I have fallen to the blade of Dukat."

The Klingon had to think about that. _"Standby."_

"That's her," Hatrem pointed out the easily identifiable terror-stricken woman torn between fighting security to her death to get to her daughter and not wanting to further endanger her.

"Ranit!" her mother clutched her, thanking the Prophets, security, Dax for her child's life. "Whatever possessed you? Whatever possessed you!"

"He's a Prophet," Hatrem nodded.

"What? Who's a Prophet? That man -- " the mother looked wildly around for the maniac who had threatened to rob her of her blood.

"She's a little confused," Dax extended.

"Of course she's confused," the woman turned on her. "We know what's going on here, don't think we don't. We wouldn't even have been here except her father wanted us home now. Away from you people -- don't touch her!" she shoved Dax's hand away. "Don't any of you touch her! What do you know about the Prophets?"

"He gave me a better tomorrow," Hatrem explained. 

"Yes, of course he did," her mother kissed her. "Of course he did. Don't listen to them. Don't listen to any of them."

"Hatrem still has to see Doctor Bashir," Dax bit her tongue.

"Why?" the woman insisted. "Anyone can see the child is fine."

"Just shut up and take her!" Kira intervened with a rough grab of the woman's arm to turn her over to security. "Get her out of here. Honestly!" she sputtered to Dax. "We're just starting to get things under control, the last thing we need is someone spouting off about the Prophets -- Is that the hostage?"

"Was," Dax smiled. "The daughter."

"Wrong one," Kira assured. "What's the status? Do we have them?"

"Him. And, well -- "

Benjamin answered them. Loud, and emphatically clear. 

"Chief?" Sisko insisted impatiently.

"The intruder knows the systems," Worf agreed with O'Brien's frustration.

"My left foot," O'Brien yanked the lower panel open to keep on yanking out a few isolinear rods if he had to. "He's got about fourteen different shunts in place…That's more than a few hours work, that's a few days. I'm talking team effort…"

"He's got a communication channel open," Odo nodded above his head, studying the circuit panels.

That was it. Sisko didn't ask where. Intra-Station or subspace. His hand slammed the panel closed, answering O'Brien's heated "Damn it!" with a barking, "Move! Move! Move!" for all of them as he turned his phaser rifle on the doors, proving what a setting higher than ten could do to heavy alloys in less than half a minute. What didn't explode to vaporize, contented itself with simply exploding. The potential for geological side effects was restricted to a minor shaking of the floor. The rebound struck the control panels, taking out half of the isolinear rods and a decent portion of the lighting in the immediate area. It was an attack sufficient in inspiring the computer to reset her Red Alert status to standard protocol and engage her weapons systems in preparation for defense and counter measures. The responsibility of setting the computer straight as far as who was responsible Sisko left to Worf together with checking the environmental systems along the affected Promenade. The Chief was with him through what was left of the outer doors and lobby of the security office, working to disengage the inner doors and her force field that held through it all; Odo was secretly glad to know that.

"So did the communication channel," he noticed over Worf's shoulder.

"Priority subspace," Worf agreed. 

"I don't suppose you can tell to whom," Odo grunted.

"From your station, yes," Worf assured.

"Yes, well," unless Odo was mistaken the Bajoran was still in command of his station. He eyed Kira with Dax.

"What happened?" that was Kira.

"We knocked, but he refused to answer -- " Odo nodded to the bipolar torch making its timely entry, possibly just in time. "Better late than never."

"I've got it," Kira relieved Worf at the control panel. "Help the Captain."

"There's still that force field…" Odo reminded, not saying the security fields were indestructible. They weren't. A disruptor could penetrate most. That's why they still had doors.

"Taking care of that now," Kira reset a circuit, generating a few complaining sparks. "Dax?"

"Field's down," Dax called back, excitement building in her voice; probably something to do with the Captain and the disruptor in his hands as she worked feverishly trying to help the Chief.

"Yes," Odo noticed how the field was disabled along with noticing the Captain taking the honors of cutting the door open away from Mister Worf. "I don't suppose any of these shunts are standard Bajoran sabotage?"

"Some of them," Kira agreed.

"I'll make a note of that."

She already had. "When's the last time this panel was checked?"

"Within the hour before the conference. Why? It's my understanding all of this is timed for control from some remote location."

"It is. Pull the duty roster. You're looking at the control location."

"Really," Odo eyed the circuits. "The Chief didn't mention that."

Kira was sure O'Brien would.

"What about Red Alert? Shields specifically," Odo asked. "At the moment, the entire station's a security holding cell."

"Not affected." Kira shook her head.

"What does that mean?"

"Not interested in leaving?"

All but one of them. Odo wasn't sure if that was good news or bad concerning the others.

"You run the risk, Captain, of a cascading system failure," Anar forewarned Sisko over the com system, listening to the station's translator clean the Klingon expletives from the introduction of the bridge Commander.

__

"This is Commander Kor'Vek…what is this nonsense about General Martok? Who is this? Hello? Answer and identify yourself accordingly."

"Repeat," Anar requested.

The resulting spiel was largely Klingonese. The translator's ability to extract a clear answer, limited. _"Identify, or this link will be severed!"_

"The Prophets know the liar that you are," Anar engaged the transporter with a smile. "Request emergency assistance. Can you read me? I have information vital to the Empire."

"Chief?" Sisko grabbed the torch from Worf, firing his way to cut through the doors.

"Yeah, right," O'Brien scoffed at Anar's warning of imminent disaster, "like you care --_ no_, there's no risk of cascading failure -- with the disruptor, yes. The torch, no…Give me that thing," he instructed Dax to collect the phaser rifle. "Before the thrusters engage, and we find ourselves shifting orbit."

"Just a slight exaggeration," Dax smiled, reaching to secure Benjamin's momentarily discarded rifle just in case he did decide the torch was too slow.

"Yeah, right, _slight_," O'Brien wiped the beads of perspiration out from his eyes. "Slight -- what the heck is that?"

"Major?" Odo seconded the question as the notorious sound of some major system engaging filled the air.

"The transporter!" Kira gasped. "Chief!"

"Damn it!" O'Brien jumped up, grabbing the phaser rifle and tossing it to Dax as Worf bolted for the transporter pad. "All right, fine. Tell him to go ahead. Just go ahead!"

"The transporter," Dax nodded to Sisko cutting the power to the torch.

Sisko stared at her. "Chief?"

"Shields are intact," Kira shouted back.

"Famous last words -- " O'Brien moved her aside. "Let me see here -- "

"Was that you?" Odo nodded to Kira.

"No, it wasn't me -- of course it wasn't me!"

"Just asking."

"What do you want to do?" Dax's eyes bore into Sisko's burning back at her.

"Give me that," Sisko tossed her the torch.

"Right," Dax closed her eyes, handing him the rifle.

"Get out of here," Sisko instructed. "That includes you, General. Status, Chief?"

"He's going nowhere," O'Brien promised. "Just keep him covered -- "

"In case he tries to," Dax nodded to Martok's growl.

"Come on…" O'Brien hammered his com badge. "Worf!"

__

"System is operational but non-functioning -- there is no lock."

"He must be having trouble with the shields…" Odo surmised.

"I know he's having trouble with the damn shields," O'Brien assured. "Worf! Override the autosequencers to manual at the buffer. We'll hold him there, if we have to."

__

"Understood."

"Chief!" Sisko insisted.

"I'm on it…I'm on it…"

"Apparently," Odo agreed as three or four circuits suddenly lit up in sequence. "What's that?"

"Transporter -- " Dax hit her com badge. "Worf!"

__

"System remains at standby -- "

"What do you mean standby?" O'Brien snapped. "I'm looking at -- oh, Jeez!" his fist hit the panel.

"Wrong transporter," Dax sighed. "Benjamin!"

"I take it that likewise means what shields," Odo nodded to Kira.

"That's about the size of it," Kira just slumped down to the floor with her head in her hands.

"Yes, well, it stands to reason if we have backup systems, so do they," Odo grunted as the Captain blew the inner doors with the same ferocity as he had blown the outer with similar rebounding effects. Whether or not it constituted a cascading system wide failure to the security network remained to be determined. It took the better part of a minute for the rebound to disburse. By that time their auxiliary systems were operating in the area -- or at least they alluded they were. They were all still breathing, as they were all still alive. That included the Captain getting to his feet to sweep the debris off the console. The Bajoran was nowhere to be seen.

"I don't suppose that means…" Odo dared to hope the worse.

"No, I didn't get him, Constable," Sisko assured.

"Well, you tried."

"Trying doesn't cut it!" Sisko's fist shattered what remained of the readout display. "Mister Worf," he took a breath, activating his com badge, "by any chance -- "

__

"I was not successful in shunting the matter stream -- sensors however, have determined coordinates of the target to be that of General Martok's Bird-of-Prey…"

Sisko's head snapped up.

"What?" Martok snarled. "That's impossible!"

The was a coldness evident in Worf's reply. _"You are welcome to see for yourself."_

"On the contrary!" Sisko was through the doors and gone. Martok, Kira, and Dax with him.

"Next," Odo nodded to the Chief lingering to toss a piece of something back onto the console in resignation.

"Tried. I'll say he tried," O'Brien answered with disgust. "The guy's got someone on his side, let's put it that way. I don't know if it's a Prophet, Martok, or who it is. But he definitely has someone on his side."

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Klingon Commander Kor'Vek hovered over his men at the helm console. The forward viewer screen was operational and showing a clear picture of graphic distortion and white noise. There were five of them that Anar could see as he transported. Why they were poised at the helm, he didn't know. They weren't going anywhere. They were docked. Minutes later they were dead, and he was leaning freshly exhausted over their communications system; his arm gashed from a kut'luch, contacting Tan likely having his own troubles attempting to bypass the Alert lockout and raise the station.

Tan was. Since before the time of Pfrann's aborted hail. Anon's aging giant of a Chief Engineer along with his bridge crew knew the station was responding to an internal Red Alert with deflector shields fully engaged and weapons not powered. That changed several minutes later when the principle array powered on in response to an explosion Tan was able to pinpoint to the Promenade. He couldn't tell where exactly though. Frustrated, he issued a demand hail to the station. It was ignored or it didn't get through the communication lockout. Five minutes later the weapons array powered down to return to full armament with a second explosion also occurring on the Promenade. Tan was this close to engaging rear thrusters in an attempt to rip away from the docking ring when he received a hail from Martok's Bird-of -Prey.

"What does he want?" Tan cursed knowing it was the same as him. Answers. "I don't have time for them. Shut it down -- shut it down!" he clouted the hesitant helmsman.

"I love Cardassians," Anar facetiously agreed when his Klingon distress signal was abruptly silenced. You could always count on them not to answer a cry for help. "Tan," he tried the more conventional standard priority hailing frequency complete with breathless voice imprint, "it's Anar. I need you to transport me before I or Captain Sisko end up in the Infirmary from collapse. If you need a security code, use one of Prefect Dukat's. ADL40 springs to my mind for some reason. An old but a good one."

Seconds later he was on the bridge of Anon's battle cruiser reaching for a seat to catch his breath; the powerful Tan expectantly Cardassian in his greeting.

"Get him something to drink," Tan shoved a startled unfamiliar sentry awake with a demand of Anar. "What makes you think we keep a data record of archaic security codes?"

"For the same reason Klingons seem to have this insatiable fascination with hand-to-hand combat," Anar's sweating chest quieting to one final deep breath. "I'm getting too old for this."

"Hm," Tan noticed. The phaser rifle as well as the bleeding arm. "Kut'luch?"

"Kut'luch," Anar admitted, checking the gash. "As Anon would say, they look much worse than me…" The bridge suddenly rocked slightly like a boat crossing a wake. Anar sighed, satisfied and reasonably confident Sisko didn't make it aboard Martok's Bird-of-prey in time to take an unexpected trip to his Heaven.

"What was that?" Tan released his grip on Anar's chair with an insistent snap for his helm.

"A Klingon Disruptor set for overload," Anar accepted a glass from the sentry. "I needed a scapegoat. General Martok seemed to be begging for the role -- water? Or fish juice?" he nodded, catching the smell. "Never mind, I'll take it. Thank you." 

Tan eyed him. The question was for his helmsman. "Is that true?"

"I have an explosion, yes, aboard the Bird-of-Prey."

"Don't worry about the arm," Tan's head flicked generously back to Anar in repayment for the glorious deed whatever the reasons. "We have medical field supplies."

"Progressive," Anar agreed with a glance around the small bridge crew of seven. Two more than Martok, two of whom he didn't recognize even though they recognized him; the sentry and the Cardassian at the helm.

"You can trust them." Tan thought he could read minds. "They would have been dead before you entered this ship. They know it, now you do."

"I, my friend, couldn't care less," Anar promised. "Definitely about Shakaar. Anon's in the Infirmary with someone's dinner knife in his stomach."

"What?!" Tan hissed like a cobra ready to strike.

"He lives," Anar reassured. "I'm sure he's in surgery by now. My deep concern is Pfrann. I wasn't able to locate -- "

"Pfrann is fine," Tan dismissed, either knowing or guessing. "We had a hail from him. Thirty minutes after the first alert. He aborted it, I don't know why. "

"Transport perhaps?" Anar frowned. "He may have located Anon. It was approximately thirty minutes when I left. Bashir was on his way."

"I don't know anything about that," Tan claimed. "We have been attempting to reestablish contact with him -- anyone. The systems are going crazy over there."

"Not all without good reason," Anar advised sourly. "They opened fire on Quark's a few minutes after nine -- "

Tan interrupted. "Who are they? Martok?"

"Maquis," Anar passed on finishing the fish juice to have a look over the com system and see what had changed. Very little. What little appeared to be of Dominion influence. The Cardassians always made friends where they should never make friends, and always cut corner where they should never cut corners. "We can probably trace their sponsorship back to either Gowron or Winn. I know the leader; my brother Hawk. It's a splinter group of my own troops. Sisko has his work cut out for him. They went in as Shakaar's Special Forces…May I?"

"Yes, go ahead," Tan snapped his fingers at his Ops officer. "Anything he needs, help him. All of you. Issue the order."

"Thank you." Anar sat down at the console. "Our best chance for information until we can reestablish a link with Pfrann are the communications between the station and the UFP…Bajor. Qo'noS…I know the coding sequences. We'll work it out."

"We will. How big is this group? There's 350 Special Forces officers aboard Terok Nor."

"Two hundred and fifty-two Bajorans, 142 assorted Federation," Anar agreed. "Add to that forty or fifty Maquis. It was difficult to tell after the first few seconds who was whom. Hawk never does anything alone and he always does it big. Quick. Random, usually. Which it appeared to be. I know Paq's dead. I'm also not sure what's going on with Damar -- "

"What about Janice?" Tan insisted.

Anar smiled. "That's very considerate of you."

"She's his wife," Tan shrugged. "You give me information, I give it to you. You want to see the transmission for petition of marriage? Check the data banks, it's in there. 2400 yesterday. Anon doesn't care about this stupid conference of Damar's anymore than I, you, or Shakaar. Janice, yes. Klingons, yes. Number One…And that bitch Winn kissing the hem of Gowron behind _your_ back," his hand caught Anar in the shoulder, "not mine. Guaranteed protection from us the Federation cannot afford her come the new war. The woman is a fool. The hand the Union bites is the hand Gowron eats. Wait, you'll see."

"No, it's not necessary," Anar declined the offer to verify Anon's request to the Cardassian legal counsel. "I know Anon -- which son of Dukat would taste the blood of Martok?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"A knife. That's what I got from it."

"It would depend. There was an issue yesterday with Martok and his kut'luch. Anon. Something to do with Pfrann and Janice. But no drawn blood. If Martok says there's blood, he's lying. Why? You think Martok has something to do with this dinner knife?"

"No. Not directly. The two men who attacked Anon were Bajoran and are dead. I killed one, my son killed the other -- Dak'jar. You remember him. So, yes, make that three more Maquis aboard Terok Nor, of which there are now only two. Betrayal has its benefits and its rewards."

"You brought only two men with you?" Tan repeated.

Anar looked at him.

"Discounting us," Tan's hand sliced the air. "Discounting us."

"I wasn't discounting you."

"Neither were we," Tan sighed. "But we can't do anything. One man. That is what the Federation and Shakaar would agree to, that's it. Paq. An idiot. Puppet. Like Damar. This would never have happened on Cardassia. Martok _or _Winn, neither would have dared."

"Wrong," Anar believed. "Where there's a will, there's a way."

"Klingon?" Tan frowned trying to place the proverb.

"Federation. How many men do you have?"

"Thirty-five. Only three you don't know. These two and my engineer. This is Dukat's -- Anon's. We are Anon's. He refused otherwise. He didn't even_ want_ this conference. Too many concessions. I agree."

"For the interest of Central Command or the Civilian Council?"

Tan laughed. "Depends on who you talk to."

"Both," Anar assured. "On behalf of the one with the most fans, who carries the most weight, it doesn't matter. Stress their own interests and belabor the four of them. Anon is injured, Paq is dead. Damar or Pfrann, either one could be next. One Sentinel is out of the question, start with thirty-five. They need protection that Sisko is clearly unable to afford them. A demand. Not a request."

"Signal Cardassia," Tan ordered his helmsman. "Attempted assassination of Emperor Damar and Gul Dukat by unknown Bajoran extremists supported by the Klingon Empire -- what?"

"Unknown?" his helmsman replied. "He said they are Maquis. His own brother and troop."

"Theoretically," Tan rejected the resurrection of an old pest. "A splinter faction of his former group. They want to call themselves Maquis, let them. They are not Maquis. We have destroyed the Maquis -- true or false?'

"Close enough," Anar admitted.

Tan chuckled with an indication of Anar's arm. "Yes. Personally reformed, like Pfrann. _Reformed _True Way -- the blood of Martok?_ Both _sons of Emperor Dukat. Same reasons. Cardassia. Self. Family. Different structure. One with order. Central Command, like me. One without. Maquis, like you."

"A case of mistaken identity," Anar maintained Sisko's belief in his guilt was wrong. "I came here to protect, not kill."

"Only Klingons," Tan nodded. "For scapegoats."

"Maybe a little more," Anar granted. "Revenge. They took my replicators and half of my men."

"Again?" Tan groaned.

"No," Anar surrendered. "Last year. I've counted the days for the chance, you're right."

Tan laughed again; his helmsman notifying he had a response to his hail to Cardassia. "No, that's all right I will answer," he stopped Anar. "I am as capable as demanding as you -- _you_, need something for that arm. The console, I am not concerned about. It's solid. Cardassian. It's seen worse."

Unfortunately Anar knew how it would likely continue to see more. He could see the vision of the young woman from the ore bay; her Bajoran-Cardassian face clearly reflected in the readout display. Aware it wasn't particularly attractive, it still had a sense of grace. "What was Anon's sister's name? The half-Bajoran one killed by Mister Damar?" He thanked the sentry for the medical pack. "And a glass of wine, please. I don't care whose."

"Ziyal," Tan replied, busily coding his message to the Union. "Why?"

"Curiosity," Anar claimed. "A notice how Sisko was no less a determined man than I. Right reasons. Wrong man. A reasonable error. He was chasing a Bajoran in a yellow suit attempting to escape. I wouldn't have stopped to ask questions, anymore than I stopped to explain."

"Who would?" Tan snorted.

"Not too many." Anar set to work on locating those priority channels sure to be alive with activity with a sigh for Ziyal. "Unfortunately not too many. Not in this lifetime."

__

"Five," she endeavored to communicate. _"Remember the number five."_

"My child," Anar promised her. "Of all the numbers I know, I know the number five by heart."

"Seven," Tan answered, misunderstanding and blind to the visiting soul of the child Ziyal. "Legate Dukat has seven children."

Wrong. He had at least nine. By their mates, eighteen. By their children, fifty-seven. By their mates and offspring, 198 and so on down the line. The shadow of Prefect Dukat was large and extremely fertile. With the Prophets blessing and guidance his wife would figure out a way to tape his mouth and tie his hands and it would be the only lasting accomplishment of the butchering pig.

"Rest easy in your confusion and suspicion," Anar addressed the helmsman attempting to cloak his interest in their surprising ally. "The man is Bajoran. His face Shakaar Adon, the Elder. The offer of assistance bold, true and unfamiliar to your ears. Its reasons as tangible as yours. Bajor. Self. Family. Janice is a daughter of my village. If I choose to extend the distinction friend to your Gul and his Lieutenant and Sentinels, be assured they have earned it. Their race and loyalties uncompromised and irrelevant as my own."

The Cardassian scoffed, not to be outdone. His words as forceful and surprisingly direct as Anon's or Pfrann's. "Rest easy in your own mistrust, Bajoran. I follow one leader. Dukat. Your reassurance is of no interest to me. His distinction of friend in you is my assurance you have earned it."

"Impossible," Anar laughed. "I would give my immortal soul to honor your fair request. But I've lived too long under the cloak of deception myself to easily recognize the other Cardassian loyal to his leader and unyielding in his power and force. Not drunk on self-indulgence and grinning like some clown. Requirements of faith and trust in men I do not know I leave to Anon, far less bigoted than me." 

The explosion aboard Martok's Bird-of-Prey occurred while Sisko was still in the chamber of the airlock. The force of the blast, largely absorbed by the structure, was significantly louder than its shock wave creating a rumbling sensation in the floor under their feet as the Bird-of-Prey groaned against the outside pressure lock.

"That was powerful," Dax remarked as the O'Brien checked the status of the docking clamps.

"Pressure's registering normal."

"All right, go ahead," Sisko instructed, his fingers mentally crossed the readout was accurate. It was. The system released the lock and they were facing the sealed door of the ship. That was a little touchy. Either having been intentionally set into place or automatically engaged to even out pressure on the other side.

"See if you can get a reading on the cabin." Sisko joined O'Brien at the console while Martok rammed the butt of his rifle against the door in anger.

"It is not worth the risk," Worf stopped the General from carrying it any further in a repeat performance of Sisko's assault on the security office.

"To you, perhaps!" Martok snarled. "The intruder is aboard my ship now."

"A ship of Klingons," Worf assured.

"I don't suppose it's possible he miscalculated his mark?" Dax wondered, hardly joking and thinking again of the Bajoran's decision not to fire on Martok. Something remained wrong with the terrorist's sudden willingness to offer himself up in sacrifice, unless that had been his goal all along. To assassinate Damar and lay the incriminating blame at the feet of the Klingon Empire.

"Readings are coming through normal," O'Brien reported. "Want to try the torch -- or disruptor?" he hadn't forgotten about the power clutched in Sisko's hand or the fury that had fueled the use of it. 

"You could attempt both!" Martok promised neither would work.

"Yeah, right," O'Brien scoffed. "Well, what say you start clawing, and I'll be right back with the torch…"

"Gentlemen, please!" Sisko insisted. "Major, get that ship in a tractor beam, in case anyone's planning on leaving."

"Understood…Do you want to reset docking clamps? Pressures continue to read normal."

"No, that's not necessary," Sisko took aim; gentler in his approach than earlier. Relying on absorption to overload the door's trigger mechanism as he steadily fed the resistive alloy with a lower energy output to contain any rebound. They were looking at several minutes and probably a drained phaser rifle before the door surrendered; it hissed open it just over thirty seconds.

"So much for Klingon hardware," Odo was set to grunt.

Commander Dax was more accurate in her assessment. "I think they heard you knocking."

So apparently they had. The uniform of the Klingon who released the lock was blackened from his fire-fighting efforts. The kut'luch in his hand was bloody. Sisko won the foot race to be the first one through the door. Odo did his part for the forensic team sure to follow, winning the reach for the extended dagger identified as belonging to a Commander Kor'Vek.

"Thank you," Odo nodded, undisturbed by Martok's growl or glare. Though the blood appeared to be Klingon, unless Martok was prepared to claim his Commander Kor'Vek got it into his head to slash one of his men -- entirely possible -- it wouldn't hurt for Bashir to have a look at what lay under that smear. A quick count around of the limbs and assorted other body parts put about five Klingons on the bridge that was in shambles and still burning in a few areas. Odo noted how a second door leading into the interior of ship was opened. The Klingons who responded to the situation aboard their bridge had apparently gained access from two different directions. Three of them were still there, shoving the burning debris aside to check their equipment.

"Disruptor set for overload." Were the first words out of O'Brien's mouth. The destruction of the confined area seemed to support the theory of a bomb, makeshift or otherwise. "Try about three of them. It took more than one to do this." 

"Yes," Sisko supported. "Worf, Dax, check the systems…Chief, help them."

"Specifically the transporter," Odo added unnecessarily, noticing there didn't appear to be anything remotely Bajoran-looking among the rubble.

"Where was the kut'luch?" Sisko seized their Klingon doorman. "I said, where!"

"In his hand!" he snarled.

"It's possible Kor'Vek fell on it." Dax knew before she attempted accessing the logs it was going to take hours to sort through the destruction to extract any data.

"Fell!" Martok apparently preferred the idea of a super-empowered Bajoran to a clumsy Klingon. "What?" he glowered at Odo. 

"Well…" Dax wouldn't go as far as super-empowered. "If the terrorist transported, taking two or so by surprise with his disruptor…"

"That only leaves three." Personally, Odo had seen enough.

"Yeah, huh?" O'Brien was thinking what Odo was thinking. "That's a disruptor," he pointed out the telltale evidence of the com system to Sisko. "The explosion didn't do this. He blew the console first."

"It's the same with the transporter," Dax agreed.

"Transporter?" the Klingon sneered.

"You check the ship?" O'Brien countered.

"For what?"

"A Bajoran," Odo offered for the Klingon's perplexity. "Not that it wouldn't have been difficult to transport after the console was destroyed."

"Just a little," Dax dusted her hands off, trying not to think how some of this did look just a little over done.

"What are you saying?" Martok studied Sisko. "My men did this?"

"Not unheard of," Odo replied. "Beyond the glory of dying for Empire. I repeat. A Bajoran. One Bajoran. Five dead Klingons. It could just be a matter of saving face…" he ogled Worf approaching from his examination of the discernible body parts.

"I find two torsos consistent with disruptor effects…"

"Alluding they were probably sitting," Odo grunted.

"Yes. I would say that is consistent with the element of surprise," Worf assured Sisko. "That man's throat has clearly been cut -- but the others…"

"We'll have to leave it to Bashir," Odo looked over the kut'luch.

"Commander?" Sisko asked Dax.

She hesitated, remembering again the power behind the fist striking her face and the tight muscles in the Bajoran's forearms. "I would have to agree that it would be unlikely for one Bajoran -- "

"To overpower five Worfs," Odo completed.

"But not impossible." Captain Sisko was apparently feeling particularly generous.

"Yeah, well, impossible," O'Brien scoffed. "There's impossible, and then there's impossible. Keeping your cool behind a door being blown out in front of you is one thing. But _this_," he assured Kira, "is impossible. No offense."

"I'm not offended," Kira put up her hands. "Believe me, we did enough."

"Yes," Sisko said. "As did our intruder do far more than keep his cool, Chief."

"So he did," Odo studied the dagger. "From stamina to speed to surviving a jump without so much the evidence of a scratch -- there's another possibility. He wasn't Bajoran. Who could do this is me; a Changeling. Without need of subsequent transport capabilities."

"We'll know in five minutes," Sisko took the dagger.

"Blood group," Odo understood. "It'll take a couple of hours to set up to flood every compartment with radiation -- I'll sit out that part. Guard the door -- that is, if you want to me to stay."

"Absolutely, Constable," Sisko assured. "Full forensic squad, Chief. I want a reading and measurement of everything. I'll send a medical team up."

"Got it."

"Quark's, Mister Worf, until it's cleared," Sisko directed. "Dax, you're with me -- no, wait a minute," he stopped at Kira, eyeing her injured ankle constricted by her boot with her leg swollen almost her knee.

"No, that's all right," Kira shook her head. "Take Dax with you. I don't know anything about DNA sequencing -- I can't even feel my ankle. I want to go to Quark's. I have to -- they're my people, Benjamin. My people did this. I can't possibly allow them get away with it. I can't."

"Understood." Sisko stopped one last time in front of General Martok. "With the risk, General, of driving an irreparable wedge between us…"

"The wedge is there!" Martok seethed. "Do you truly believe I would do this? Murder my own men to silence the mouths of Dukat? No! I would kill them, as they attempted to kill me -- twice! Chancellor Gowron is en route to the UFP as we speak due to my report to him of last evening. What do you think he is going to say about this? Five dead men, and a second attack upon my person. War, Sisko! War!"

"I know, General!" Sisko's quieting temper exploded with new rage, "that until I know what happened here, in Quark's, on the Promenade and everywhere else, you are on the list along with everyone else. With _that_ threat putting you damn close to the top!"

"That's far enough!" Kira halted Martok stepping to follow Sisko.

He glared at her; her hand on his arm, the top of her head grazing his chest. "Attempting to prove the abilities of your Bajoran comrade?"

"I am not Bajoran," Worf stepped in, "with few abilities to prove to you. It is far enough, General. As it is inaccurate to accuse either Dukat of attempting to kill you."

"Not exactly," Odo corrected. "There is no telling how far Dukat would have gone -- he killed an unarmed man, Major," his matter-of-fact and droning tone met Kira's appalled expression.

"Disarmed!"

"To be remanded to security."

"That's enough!" Kira cut him off with a bark down the corridor for the Security Task Leader. "Remand General Martok to a security isolation cell until notified. If he resists -- drop him in his tracks!"

"What did Dukat do?" O'Brien asked when the rebels left along with the rebellious to go their own ways.

"Sentinel Dukat," Odo clarified. "Ripped a Bajoran's heart out with a broken table leg playacting Klingon."

"Oh, great!" O'Brien said, not in support of Kira's position of self-defense.

"Or Worf's," Odo nodded, not to set Kira apart.

"_Worf?"_ O'Brien echoed.

"Believes he's responsible for not taking control of the situation. "

"That's crap!"

"It is," Odo agreed, and Sentinel Dukat would be spending the rest of the night in a security isolation cell once the business with his brother's surgery was over. That settled that.

CHAPTER NINE

Benjamin looked as if he suddenly felt ill at ease expecting a blood grouping on a dagger in the middle of the chaos in the Infirmary where every examining bed was taken, in surgical intensive care, as well as the surgical theaters.

"Is there something I can help you with, Captain?" One of Julian's charge nurses, Michelle Faraday was at Dax's elbow.

"Yes…" Sisko stopped in his calculations of the injury count. "Is Doctor Bashir available?"

"He's in surgery with Gul Dukat. I would say half an hour? The vascular team could probably complete the closure…But…considering who he is?"

"Yes," Sisko agreed the issue was sensitive.

She smiled at the dagger in his hand. "Blood grouping? It looks Klingon, but you're right. You can't always tell."

"If that would be possible…"

"I can take it for you. It's nothing. Just a few seconds. Later…" she chuckled, setting the dagger up on the diagnostic console, "yes, then I might ask you to come back. Right now, I'm acting traffic director…it's Klingon," she nodded to the analysis appearing on screen. "But you have another…see this streak along the shadow of the blade? That's a different group. Bajoran. Let me quickly run a few other screenings and see if I can tell you anything else that may help you now -- some form of evidence, I take it?"

"Yes, actually," Dax smiled.

"What isn't?" Michelle shrugged. "We've had more security in here than injured. Finally, I just had to tell them. Please, I know you have your duty, but we also have ours. Trust us. We know what we're doing. I think that's when Doctor Bashir said you're hired…" she nodded again at the display. "Both male. The Bajoran is around sixty…the Klingon…I would say forties? It gets a little more complicated measuring Klingon years. Does that help?"

"Very much so, yes. Thank you," Sisko appreciated the information.

"It will be a while before you'll have a complete analysis -- DNA comparison and matching to see if we have a record. How urgent is this?"

"Urgent enough. But, no, I understand there are other priorities at the moment. I would like to keep the kut'luch for now. Is that possible without jeopardizing the analysis?"

"I'll get you a bio-pack," she patted his arm; he wasn't quite sure why. "Anything else I can do?"

"A question or two. Do you have any idea what the injury count might be?"

"At least 300 -- a lot of civilians. A lot. Fatalities? I'm guessing between one and one-fifty? I know they're still searching. We've set up the morgue in the passenger waiting room of the airlock next to us. It was the closest large area with system access."

"No, that's fine," Sisko stopped listening at hundreds. One fifth to one quarter the estimated occupancy of Quark's at the time between the bar, the gambling areas and restaurant.

"Whose idea was it to use the Temple for the survivors?"

"Mine. Why?"

"It gives people strength," she patted his arm again. "Doesn't matter the faith. If you're waiting to hear about friends or relatives, or just waiting for permission to go home. We have a counseling team there, and I believe two nurses -- my question. Unless you have another?"

"Just about the Bajoran child who was brought in from Promenade? The hostage?"

"Hatrem Ranit. Cute little girl -- bright, also. Very bright. I have her and her mother in Doctor Bashir's office for now. There's a nurse with her -- and also a security officer," she acknowledged what Dax already knew about the mother's caustic attitude. "The mother is pretty upset. Angry with you, angry with me -- I don't know. I would probably be angry, too. Again, it's going to be a while before Doctor Bashir meets with her…"

"No, that's fine. I want the child and her mother examined thoroughly for any trauma, and, yes, positive identification -- "

"Overnight observation for post traumatic symptomatic responses," Michelle interrupted him. 

"I beg your pardon?"

"The mother will believe it," she promised. "We'll put Hatrem in a nice isolation room where it's quiet -- she can relax. Play if she wants to. Her mother can stay with her -- consider it taken care of."

He wouldn't dream of considering it otherwise. "You had a question?'

"Doctor Lange -- top of Doctor Bashir's list should you stop by. I understand she has a doctorate in forensic medicine?"

"Sciences, actually," Dax offered.

"Yes…" Sisko believed he had an idea where they might be heading without needing to take another look around. "However, I don't think…"

"The morgue," Michelle reassured him. "Not here -- goodness," she chuckled to Dax, "look at his face. It's just an idea Doctor Bashir had to free up a medical technician or two. It's completely secured. Absolutely no unauthorized personnel. Even once we begin identification process and know who we have."

"What do you think?" Dax asked him.

Sisko smiled at the dedicated, caring nurse. "I can't see where it hurts to ask."

"No, it doesn't," Michelle patted his arm one last time, handed him his bio-pack with the dagger careful preserved and a hypospray to calm his nerves. "Solid advice, difficult to follow. Try and relax. It will be all right."

Dax slung the strap of the bio-pack over her shoulder as they exited the Infirmary. "I can run the DNA analysis for you from the science lab to see if we can match the Bajoran to any of the Special Forces -- or even someone who's just been to the station."

"Actually, Nurse Faraday raised an interesting question with identification; the accuracy of our data files," Sisko contemplated. "Our intruders don't seem the type to leave too many stones unturned. Not only to assist them with their exit, but their infiltration."

"Good point. What do you want to do?" 

"I'm not willing to risk a data link with the planet," Sisko decided. "I'd rather have the original files for comparison. Relieve Worf to take the Defiant to Bajor to secure them. I'll notify Shakaar he's en route."

"Along with the reasons why," Dax nodded. "I know Kira keeps a backup log of the station's Bajoran Security force for her own records. We can use that one instead of the system's. What about the UFP and the Federation squad?"

Sisko didn't want to say he highly doubted if those records would be necessary. "I'm not willing to wait three days. A data link is our only option. As far as asking for assistance from Doctor Lange…"

"It could be the perfect political coup," Dax smiled.

Something else Sisko didn't want to say. "Only if Doctor Lange feels comfortable with the request. I don't want any pressure put on her to perform beyond her diplomatic responsibilities. This isn't her problem, it's ours. But, yes, if you wouldn't mind asking. I'll be apprising the UFP of the situation and how it stands at the moment. We'll see how they wish to proceed from here."

"That'll be the day," Dax handed him back his bio-pack.

"Well, within reason," Sisko agreed with a shake of his head for the shoulder bag and dagger inside. Sixty years old? Not saying the Bajoran was old, but he was older. Close to fifteen years older than he was, and he would have a fight on his hands, likely to his own death. It didn't seem possible. Even for a Bajoran. Sisko didn't know what that meant as far as General Martok and his men.

"Something other than the element of surprise," Dax intruded on his thinking, almost sadly.

"I'm not quite sure what could surprise anyone to that extent, Commander," Sisko walked away.

"His age?" Dax tried to imagine what would prompt five Klingons into not immediately responding to the Bajoran's attack, ultimately giving him the edge to best them. "The fact that he was alone?" Laughter, over confidence, she ran the gamut. "Shock. His face -- Benjamin!"

"Yes?" Sisko turned around.

It sounded like such a silly question. "Did you happen to see the Bajoran's face?"

"No…" he had to think back. "A glimpse perhaps. In passing…"

"How much are you willing to gamble that's all anyone saw? And I don't think some form of disfigurement would stir a Klingon."

"Someone they didn't expect," Sisko frowned. "To excuse General Martok and his men the Bajoran would have to be more than an associate suddenly turning on them. Much more. A celebrity of some sort…I'm sorry, Commander, but I can't see where the Klingon Empire would be so keenly familiar with the Bajoran political or social scene to react unless the man was an extraordinarily known figure. Could it have been his ear cuff perhaps he didn't want you to see rather than his face?"

"His family mark," Dax sighed. "You could be right. It doesn't let Martok off the hook, but yes, it may have been the cuff he was actually attempting to hide."

"It's an idea though; both. I'll ask the UFP to run a counter search for suspected or known Bajoran extremists with political or social ties. Thank you."

"Don't thank me," Dax sighed again as Benjamin left. More than her instincts told her Martok's men were involved to the point of making matters appear worse than they actually had been. Upon completion of the scans and analysis, Benjamin would have proof of what he also knew. Presuming Martok innocent as the master mind behind the bloody assault on Quark's and his Bird-of-Prey did not erase the glaring contribution of the Klingon effort to save face. From destroying evidence of what the Bajoran had done, all the way to possibly who he was and where he transported to.

"Back to the station," Dax shrugged. Where else? Simply a matter of where. She relieved Worf at Quark's to take the Defiant to Bajor to obtain the data files on Shakaar's Special Forces. Easily securing Kira's permission to collect her logs of the station's Bajoran security force, she tactfully neglected to mention to Kira Benjamin's agreement to Julian's request for Lange to assist in the morgue, if acceptable to her.

Dax had an idea it would be acceptable to Lange. Scientists were scientists. Lange's inexperience under battle conditions did not stop her from responding to the best of her ability with the injured Dukat. Janice was calm and collected. Willing to wait the necessary minutes for assistance from qualified medical personnel, not attempting to take matters into her own hands. Even if Dax had witnessed Janice's sudden attack of weak knees following Julian's transporting Dukat to the Infirmary she would not have attributed any significance to it other than a normal reaction to the clear and present danger of her surroundings once the immediate emergency was over. That was where Lange's inexperience showed.

She was wrong, Commander Dax. Doctor Lange was extraordinarily experienced with performing under battle conditions, having survived two Klingon attacks on her small village and the more natural disaster, Rigelian fever. Garak didn't know about the Klingons, or the battle for survival against the Rigelian plague. Not the location, or size of Janice's home world. He did know Doctor Lange's treatment of Gul Anon Dukat surpassed the soothing, calm pat on the cheek from the hand of a concerned caregiver with her loving, light kisses and whispered commitments commingled with encouragement. He also knew the sudden attack of weak knees once Anon was transported was a result of Doctor Lange's personal concern and attachment to the Gul, not her surroundings. Odd, but if Garak ever anticipated getting answers to the questions his observation of Doctor Lange and Gul Dukat inspired, he had them and he wasn't even thinking about them.

No, of all the things Garak thought to think about over the last twenty-four hours, none came close in significance to the sudden and mysterious appearance of First Minister Shakaar Adon of Bajor. As blatantly so in appearance as Sentinel Dukat was in the image of his father. The terrorist had to be a relative. It was feasible he was merely a double to his advantage or disadvantage, depending upon the circumstances. To the other end, Garak couldn't see where any advantage would be granted First Minister Shakaar with the revelation of a look-a-like cutthroat terrorist on the loose, related or otherwise. He couldn't see it. He couldn't even think about it, or the Bajoran security officer. Convinced his eyes had to be playing tricks on him. 

Therefore, Commander Dax was likely comfortable and safe in her error of presuming all anyone saw was the fleeting glimpse of a face attired in a yellow jumpsuit and white hair. That was not all everyone saw. Of all the people present in Quark's, on the Promenade, if there was to be that one individual who did manage to see the Bajoran's face, the individual would be Garak. Garak knew that. As did actually Commander Dax, and quite naturally Captain Sisko. It was with great relief Garak decided that Captain Sisko and his senior staff were far too busy to even think of it.

Quark was another issue, as was Doctor Lange. Garak studied Janice slumped over on the seat of her couch, absently picking at the material, worried about her lover and waiting to hear. He decided they were lovers. Discounting Anon's genetic link to his slippery father, the important questions were why and where Shakaar's double might fit in the scheme of things. Lange also had to see the Bajoran's face; he spoke directly to her. She was startled. A turn at the tongo table if she was startled by his face, or simply to find him there. The situation had all the components of an ambitious Cardassian plot of magnanimous proportions. Garak couldn't betray his home world before he knew what he was betraying; it had to be the Klingons. Everything had to do with the Klingons. His Emperor Dukat was the one who went off on a tangent with the Dominion, the Federation…

And Bajor. Garak hit upon a plausible purpose behind Shakaar's double. Support from the presiding Bajoran Government on Cardassia's position with the Federation against the Klingon Empire, if they had to replace First Minister Shakaar with himself. A remarkably simple matter of youthening the double. Not even dramatically. Fifteen, twenty years? Everything else was already there; tailor-made. Garak solved a piece of the puzzle, pleased he still had the knack. What an unlikely Cardassian operant, Doctor Lange. He never would have imagined the charming young woman to be anything but who she was. Her obvious value. How else could she have secured the position of Bajoran representative if she gave the slightest hint to her true identity? Her relationship with Anon Dukat was irrelevant placed alongside the full truth of the matter.

Or it should have been. It was instead, destined to be her undoing. Such a waste of such a talented individual. Garak wasn't quite sure what outcome Lange could have hoped for in her relationship with Dukat. Utterly foolish on her part; predictable on Dukat's. Little wonder Legate Damar was so brusque in his treatment of the Gul. He must know about the relationship beyond what was supposed to be the agenda; certainly an Intelligence network. 

That realization of Garak's was by no means an extension of forgiveness to the new Emperor for his murder of Ziyal. Merely smug satisfaction of how ultimately the elder Dukat had the last laugh if he had to do it through his son. Failure of the Cardassian scheme was the furthest thing from Garak's mind. If it failed, there would always be another one. On that, the galaxy could rely. One of these days the Union would again require that same level of dependability from its spies. The Obsidian Order, Central Command certainly was not, nor would it ever be. Quark had a higher code of ethics and responsibility to duty than the most dutiful Gul. Garak's new task before him, now that everything else had been resolved, was to figure out how to translate the value of Quark keeping silent into something as tangible as latinum. Quark, too, saw the Bajoran close enough and long enough to know he should know the face, even if he couldn't place it immediately in that cluttered, unfocused Ferengi brain. He would eventually. Somewhere on the tip of his tongue, it would come blurting out at the most inopportune time. Another one of those galactical guarantees.

"Is Pfrann your boyfriend, too?" Leeta apparently had reached a quandary in her own puzzling analysis, dropping down on the couch next to Lange with a surrendering crack for Janice's hip.

Bewilderment registered on Lange's face; Garak could well appreciate that.

"No, of course he isn't," Leeta figured out the reason behind the friendly and familiar relationship between Janice and Pfrann to her satisfaction. "He's his brother…Here," she retrieved Pfrann's field unit from her bodice, obviously not quite as revealing as it might suggest. "Before I forget. I'm sure you'll see him before I do -- what?" she said to Garak's rattling cup of tea. "You have your uniform, I have mine. That's the extent of it."

"Oh, it wasn't your uniform I was questioning, my dear," Garak's attention was riveted on what came out of her bodice, not what was still in it. 

"It's a field unit," Leeta scoffed. "Haven't you ever seen a field unit before?"

"Yes, well, no…" Janice was blinking.

"Oh, but of course," Garak agreed. "I mean, of course, naturally I have," he smiled at Janice, not above offering a little assistance to a fellow comrade, not that she appeared to need any assistance with her act. 

"It's Pfrann's," Leeta squeezed Janice's hand tightly. "Julian did just show up from nowhere -- when you and Pfrann were talking about contacting the ship to transport Anon? That's what he had in his hand, trying to signal them. He didn't have a chance to do much else with it -- other than give it to me."

"Oh," Janice said. "No, I didn't realize…"

"It's okay," Leeta nodded. "Bigger things on your mind -- Tell me about it. Boy, you Humans sure bond quickly -- I mean, when you bond. I couldn't pry a commitment out of Julian. We're talking years."

"I'm not sure I know what you mean," Janice apologized, aware how she hadn't been paying attention, and still wasn't paying attention even though she was attempting to. It was just so difficult sitting and waiting instead of being where she could know exactly what was happening with Anon.

"Of course you don't," Leeta promised. "Like we agreed, it's just between you and me -- and you're right. Just because his father's a jerk, doesn't mean Anon has to be a jerk, too."

"Between…" Janice looked at Garak.

"Garak doesn't count," Leeta sneered. "Old Mister Know It All and his Cardassian saunas wasn't giving lectures on the structure and anatomy of the Union -- _if_ he follows my drift."

"I do," Garak purred. "However, I fail to see where your lurid imagination has any bearing -- "

"Uh, huh," Leeta said. "Is this the same lurid imagination that had me doing more than sitting up all night listening to daddy talk?" 

"No doubt whenever his Prefect felt the need to expound on the structure and anatomy of the Union," Garak smiled at Janice. "If I dare to make any sense out of what dear Leeta is attempting to convey, it would be how both she and I have had our own past experiences with the Dukat phenomenon. In turn, we can only express our sympathy and understanding to you."

"He's great in the sack," Leeta turned Janice back to her. "Ask him. He'll tell you." 

"To put it crudely," Garak shivered at the candor. "Yes, that could be one explanation -- speaking for yourself. I maintain Ziyal was ardently interested in learning about her home world."

"Don't worry about it, is what I'm saying," Leeta nodded to Janice. "I had my reasons, you have yours. You do what you have to do -- which isn't true, by the way. I wasn't Dukat's mistress. But you'd never convince _him_ of that -- "

"Him, naturally, being me," Garak moistened his already wet lips.

"So I don't even bother to try. We were just friends. Or friendly. He was anyway…"

"While you got to work in Quark's rather than the ore processing bays," Garak agreed. "Let's not bore Doctor Lange with the history of the occupation. Your point is well taken. There is no viable reason why either of us would seek to betray Doctor Lange's and Gul Dukat's liaison -- "

"You had a liaison?" Leeta was apparently thinking of some other meaning to the word, her Prophets only knew what.

"I would think involved in a liaison, my dear, yes," Garak's hand went to his brow. "Over a period of time…of more than a few hours," he clarified, not maliciously looking to destroy Leeta's romantic notions of love quite literally at first sight. More attempting to subtly inform Doctor Lange how he knew and understood everything, and would naturally keep it all to himself. 

"Oh, but," Janice said, confused. A needless and potentially dangerous effort to keep up appearances of naiveté.

"No explanations necessary, my dear," Garak immediately stressed, his eyes glittering over her nightdress; a most clever and provocative disguise to perpetrate the notion of utter innocence. "Not even as to why you're wearing your nightgown…"

"She's doing what?" Leeta coughed as Janice glanced at her dress.

"I mean," Garak shook his head. "What am I saying? Irrelevant, of course. Other than stressing the senseless point of betrayal. Which, of course, we won't do. Either of us betray either of you."

"You're wearing your nightgown?" Leeta repeated to Janice. "Did you know you were wearing your nightgown?"

"Oh, well, no…" Janice touched the blood-soaked lap of her skirt.

"Me either," Leeta assured. "Don't worry about him. Anon, I mean. He'll be fine. If anyone knows anatomy, Julian knows anatomy, take it from me…He's a doctor," she clarified for the degenerate in the room. "You know what I mean. A very good one."

"I don't doubt that," Janice smiled slightly.

"That's better," Leeta approved. "So let me see this thing…" she scooped up the dangling, filthy straps of Janice's dress. "I can't believe this is a nightgown -- Garak, are you sure?"

"It's my design, my dear."

"I know it's your design. I just can't -- Oh, what does it matter? It's still nice -- or it was. Just have Garak make you a new one. That's what I would do."

"I would be delighted. At the moment, however, I think there is a more pressing matter to discuss -- "

"Quark's easy," Leeta insisted.

"I beg your pardon?"

"He's easy! Latinum's latinum. What's he care?"

"I realize the point about latinum. The question remains as to how? It's not easy to bribe a briber. Much more than Quark's night receipts have been cut to the barest minimum with the terrorist attack -- he doesn't even have a bar."

"The Federation will pay for it," Leeta promised Janice. "They always do."

"That's very true…not that we mean to suggest," Garak likewise assured her, "this happens once or twice a week. To the contrary…"

"Once or twice a year," Leeta said.

"Is something wrong?" Garak wondered of Janice just sitting there.

"No. Actually the two of you are being very nice. I just…" she hesitated. "I'm sorry. It's not you, it's me. I don't understand why you should have to bribe someone? Anon's my fiancé. We're just trying to fulfill our obligations to First Minister Shakaar and Anon's Council."

Leeta broke the silence first with a whispered hiss for Garak. "What's a fiancé?" 

"Somewhere between a pledge and a marriage," Garak believed he replied, shocked by the announcement to say the least. "It's a Human term. You and Rom would have been fiancees at the time you were planning your wedding."

"You and Anon are getting married?" Leeta stared at Janice.

"Yes." 

"Oh. Well, see?" Leeta's hand caught her in the shoulder. "I told you he didn't have to be a jerk."

"No, Anon's not a jerk," Janice smiled. "I think what I'm asking...I really want to talk with Anon first? If I have a chance to talk with him…" her hand touched her bloody skirt.

"You will," Leeta pulled her to her feet. "Come on. What you need to do is change. Quark will keep. We'll just have Garak tell him you're a spy. That'll shut him up until you and Anon decide what you want to do -- you're really getting married?"

"We're really getting married."

"What about the conference -- wait, don't tell me," Leeta stopped her. "You care, he doesn't. Boy, that's a shocker."

"No, Anon cares. He's already sent a transmission to Cardassia telling them about us and how he wants to continue the talks. He thinks it's nonsense all the requirements of neutrality -- I'm not sure I agree with that completely. But he wants me to wait before talking to Shakaar because…well, actually he wants Shakaar to be here. Not me. That's what he's telling his Council, and he's very concerned about something happening to me in the interim before it's all worked out and I'm replaced."

"With good reason," Leeta argued Anon's point. "Honey, he's not just some guy off a ship. He's Gul Dukat. _The_ Gul Dukat now that his father's off in some Federation asylum. You have to understand that."

Did she? Garak was back to square one and reevaluating the motives of Doctor Janice Lange. His impression of Anon and the coincidental appearance of a stand in for Shakaar remained the same; altered only just slightly to account for the adjustment of Lange's now decided uninvolvement. Instead, the scheme reeked of bribery perhaps. Blackmail. If Shakaar continued to refuse the invitation to personally participate in the conference as he had in the beginning, Garak had little doubt witnesses would suddenly appear to place Shakaar himself at the scene of the crime -- or even better. Someone who looked a great deal like Shakaar, adding to the validity of the witness statements. A subsequent investigation would reveal what? That notion of some unsavory relative? The scandal would topple Shakaar, repaving the way for Kai Winn. Shakaar would never risk it. Garak would give his photographic memory to know what actually had been contained in that transmission from Anon to Cardassia Prime; little to do with marriage, he was sure.

"Do I?" Janice whispered at her dress. "I'm fine. Anon's the one in the Infirmary."

"Sheer luck," Leeta pulled her off into the other room, leaving Garak to resolve his newest quandary on his own of what to say, or not to say to whom, or at all.

"Your son does you justice," Garak acknowledged, possibly the greatest and only compliment he ever extended his personal nemesis, though hardly his alone, the elder Dukat. That didn't solve the matter as far as what to do about the abuse of such an innocent victim as Doctor Lange. Or the clear determination of Anon to proceed with this idea of a Consult, likely for a very good reason. 

"I hate decisions like these," Garak answered the buzzing door with a sigh, presuming it to be the security relief for he and Leeta; it was Commander Dax.

"I come at a bad time?" Dax smiled at Garak's somewhat distant expression.

"Oh, no," Garak was quickly at his professional best. "No, we -- I mean, Doctor Lange was just -- "

"How is he?" Leeta tore out from the sleeping area in a classic example of Bajoran discretion at its very best.

"Gul Dukat," Garak explained brightly to Dax with an added offer of some herbal tea? "We have naturally wondered about this briefly."

"She's upset," Leeta nodded. "She is _really_ upset."

"Doctor Lange," Garak identified smoothly. "Though, no, I wouldn't be alarmed. I'm sure much of her discomfort is drawn from her sheer lack of experience…I also would think there would be a degree of diplomatic concern, shall we say?" he mentioned discreetly for Dax's additional information. "Reasonable, of course. The situation doesn't exactly cast Bajor in a positive light."

"Well…" Dax hated to be the one to deflate Garak's thrill for political intrigue, but, "somehow Lange doesn't seem to be the type to care?"

"Of course she doesn't care!" Leeta gave Garak a thwack. "She's wearing him on her dress. I don't think it's what she had in mind."

"That's probably closer," Dax believed; convinced when Lange walked out from her sleeping area still wearing the blood drenched nightgown. She was pale and noticeably distracted.

"You're supposed to be changing," Leeta groaned.

"I know. I heard the door and I was wondering…is there any word yet about Anon?"

"He's in surgery," Dax smiled at Lange's unabashed and genuine interest, finding nothing out of the ordinary in the question. Wrong in his choice of representative, Shakaar clearly had his reasons. The benevolent characteristics of Lange's Human culture were glaring in her. Similar to Julian and his Nurse Faraday. Benjamin. For all his years of experiences, Benjamin still, upon occasion, could be caught very much by surprise by the ordained violence in others. This evening was definitely one of those occasions. "Everything's going to be fine."

"That's good news, isn't it?" Janice agreed. "I'm sorry, I'm having a difficult time absorbing all of this…All those people…"

"Yes," Dax understood. "I have a request from Benjamin. If you would be interested in assisting in the morgue, that would be acceptable. However, perhaps under the circumstances it might be a better idea if you just got some rest. I can order a mild sedative from the Infirmary -- "

"Oh, no." Lange perked up immediately. "I would like to help. Please, I would feel so much better if I could do something instead of just feeling so helpless -- and sorry for myself," she smiled suddenly. "How awful you must think I am. So many people have truly been injured and I'm the one in tears."

"We'll overlook it this one time," Dax proposed in jest. "Ready?"

"Oh, yes…oh, no, wait a minute," Janice halted in the doorway. "Is this a nightgown?"

"Actually…" Dax admitted, "yes."

"Oh. Well, I'm sure you have appropriate equipment." Janice rejected wasting time worrying about it by this point.

Dax could accept that. "We certainly do," her smile turned to Garak and Leeta; her parting words mainly for Garak. "I told Kira I knew of two volunteers to help Quark start with cleanup in the sections security and Engineering will be releasing, probably within the hour. Rom will be your Superintendent to make sure you don't accidentally interfere with the analyses -- personally? I'd obey Rom's every word. We really don't want to make Benjamin or Kira anymore upset than they already are."

CHAPTER TEN

Doctor Tracy Sorge was a Human Professor of Genetic Sciences in his eighties with an imposing bearing and neatly trimmed beard. For the last few years he had been on loan from Starfleet Medical Academy to the Bajoran Government to assist in keeping their medical system up to a minimal standard.

"Have to do something when you retire," he apprised Janice when Dax called him out from the isolation of the morgue to introduce them. "My wife and I were with that group at the airlock waiting for the shuttle when that officer, or whoever he was, attempted to abduct that little girl -- you catch up with him yet?" he checked with Dax. "You can say no. Certain if you don't, someone else will. Things have a way of coming back around…That's what we believe, anyway. Starfleet?" he nodded to Janice. "Or some other academy? Doesn't have to be Federation."

"Oh." His abrupt way of mixing questions with answers caught Janice slightly off guard. "Well, I attended the Medical Academy, yes."

"Think you're familiar with the systems then. That's the question. The Vulcan Science Academy rivals our own -- in a few years so will Bajor's."

"Why do I believe you?" Janice laughed.

"Because you're a smart girl. They have us working through the engineering console. The underlying matrix is Cardassian. That mean anything to you?"

"Oh," Janice said. "Well, I don't know. Does it make a difference? I haven't noticed any with the replicators -- other than some of the signage."

"In principle I'm told it should," Sorge snorted with a nod for that dress of hers. "That wasn't a friend of yours, was it?"

"The Cardassian representative Gul Dukat was injured in the attack," Dax explained.

"Heard about it," he preempted her. "Well, one of these days we're bound to figure out wishing someone dead does little to change anything. There's always another one right behind them -- you were saying something?"

Dax smiled. "Only that Doctor Lange is the Bajoran representative -- not to advertise, simply to inform. Captain Sisko would appreciate it if that were not a topic of conversation among your assigned staff."

"What assigned staff," Sorge snorted again. "I sent them back to the Infirmary where they belong. These people don't need doctors or nurses, they're dead. They need me -- and you," he assured Janice. "So you're another one of the troublemakers. Funny, 

but you don't look particularly dangerous to me -- neither does that Mister Paq of yours. Not anymore. He's in there with about a hundred others so far. That going to be a problem?"

"Well, no," Janice said. "I can't see why it would be."

"That's the answer," Sorge pointed her towards the door. "Nothing fancy to this. We're just doing some routine screenings to get identifications on these people for now. DNA, if we have it. Docking passes, if we don't and on down the line. If something unusual shows up in the initial analysis, we'll take it from there. Depending on what it is, it might have to wait its turn. There's a multitude of cultural considerations among others. They're not all Bajoran…"

That was the last Dax heard as the door closed behind them. It was 2300. Seven hours later Bashir found Janice and Sorge working diligently over the Klingon cadavers.

Bashir tried to calculate the odds of someone still managing to look so devastatingly feminine attired in a bio-suit and surrounded by Klingon gore. "Like pieces of some gruesome jigsaw puzzle," he smiled from the assortment of body parts on the table to the computer generated compilation on the display. "Is this him?"

"That's him," Sorge agreed. "If you overlay the first graphic you'll see the points of impact."

"Yes, I see that." Bashir answered from the console. "Nearest the blast, I take it?"

"Three meters, no more," Janice offered. "That's not what killed him though… may I?"

"Go ahead," Sorge waved permission. 

"Engineering gave us a schematic outline of the bridge…" Janice reset the graphics to show the origin of the explosion and probable locations of the five Klingon officers with the principal subject slumped against the communications console just prior to being torn limb from limb from the disruptor blast. "Internal scans show a series of erratic stab wounds to the breast region of the torso -- three of which could have proved fatal. The pattern is consistent with a struggle where you just keeping hitting and hitting to get the person off of you."

"Quite. Until the person actually falls, you wouldn't necessarily realize they were dead or dying -- especially with a Klingon."

"Oh, there was redundancy to the attack. But that's not the determining cause of death. Someone was holding him from behind. He was stabbed in the lower quadrant of his back, straight through a heart -- and just to be sure…" she punched in a second overlay.

"He cut his throat," Bashir nodded. "It does make the number of wounds to the chest area somewhat unnecessary, doesn't it?" 

"There are a couple of other interesting ones…May I?"

"Go ahead," Sorge agreed. "Just entering the last of this data and I'll be right with you."

"We were finishing the vascular study to determine if any of the chest wounds were inflicted after death…" Janice moved to a Bajoran Special Forces officer that Bashir recognized as the subject of his psychological review; Captain Rhome Kirst.

"After which we're going to breakfast and move a couple of these fellows aside to take a deserved rest," Sorge assured. "My wife's threatened forcible entry and removal if we don't, twice. Usually means what she says around the third time."

"Veronica," Janice laughed. "She's been working with the Counseling team over at the Temple."

"She has her specialty, I have mine…" Sorge joined them at the Bajoran, data padd in hand. "Care to make it a foursome?"

"For the Replimat or the nap?" Bashir grinned. "Probably yes to both."

"Good. We can talk about the morons who let this one escape from our clutches." He meant Janice and Starfleet Medical Academy, not the Bajoran. "We were right," he handed her the padd to see for herself with a nod for Bashir. "Consistent with a struggle. That was the key. Two chest wounds were inflicted prior to death, the rest of them afterwards -- not by his assailant. Far stronger hand. Klingon. No one else comes immediately to mind, and I don't see any evidence of Cardassian DNA anywhere. I do see Bajoran. But that seems to be troubling everyone for some reason. Of the assailant's blows, one of them was relatively superficial, the other deep enough to cause even a Klingon to momentarily react."

"Really," Bashir borrowed the padd. "Critical then at least I take it, if it wasn't a fatal strike."

"Critical enough the Klingon should have sought medical treatment if given the chance -- which he wasn't. How large do you think this Bajoran was? Is that the trouble? Want him bigger than he was, or you want the Klingons smaller? Which is it? I can tell you there's a measurable degree of strength, but there's also indications of agility and just plain skill."

Bashir smiled. "My understanding around the statue of Commander Dax. With his age being more in question than his size. Initial analysis of a kut'luch identifies him to be approximately sixty."

"Then we'll keep him my year or two younger," Sorge snorted. "Sixty isn't old. I'm eighty-three and I'm not old. If you want to use Commander Dax as a measuring tool, he'd be a little taller than the average Bajoran male -- that's also consistent with my analysis. Within reason, somewhat stronger than average also -- call him athletically inclined. How's that?"

"Consistent with witness accounts," Bashir agreed.

"Yes," Sorge grunted. "With the determining factor being what he actually was, was a great deal smarter than average. Not willing to gamble his strength against a Klingon. Given the edge, he took it and struck the fatal blow -- from the back," he assured. "Subjectively, that was the last man he killed. Won't know it for a fact until we're done. In the meantime I read a combination of needed time available to defend himself and the throat cutting. I wouldn't say it was necessarily so much an insurance policy as it marked the point of the accomplishment. Battle's end. A release of pent-up energy. Like slamming a ball after a tournament."

"Thank you. I'll take this."

"Good," Sorge waved his way between him and the head of the table. "It's the only one we've completed on the Klingons…apart from determining those three over there were killed by a Federation phase-disruptor."

"Three?" Bashir interjected. "Well, that helps in recreating a more realistic picture of what happened, doesn't it? Not that defending oneself against even two Klingons isn't impressive; it certainly is." 

"Interesting choice of words," Sorge's snort brought Bashir up short. "The Bajoran didn't defend anything or anyone. He attacked and killed…Two of them at a reasonable distance, the other at close range -- likely coming towards him. The only reason they didn't vaporize was the phaser rifle was starting to drain. Of the remaining two we sorted out the pieces, determined who was who, started with the worst looking one and got lucky."

"Are you sure you want to do this for a living?" Bashir grinned at Janice. "Not that's it not appreciated, I'm actually pleasantly surprised you're still here."

"She's sure," Sorge patted the table. "Let's talk about this one. There's some personal interest here aside from medical. He's one of the officers who attacked her partner in crime. Dukat."

"Really," Bashir looked the Bajoran over. "That's wonderful -- I don't mean wonderful that he's lying here dead, but wonderful that we have him. I have Garak waiting in the changing area. He's been looking through the logs of injured and those being held by security in hopes of identifying the second man. I understand we did know one was definitely killed -- is this he? The one Morn hit? What happened?" he accessed the padd. "I realize Morn's quite powerful, but that looks to be a massive intracerebral hemorrhage from the distortion of the face…"

"There was. But not from any cranial fracture. Someone short-circuited his neurons with a rather potent burst of neuro-electric energy."

"What?" Bashir said.

Sorge nodded. "This man was murdered -- not that they all weren't. But he had a little more attention paid to him than most of them. You can see the point of entry at the base of the skull. There's a small puncture wound straight into the inferior portion of the brain stem -- see it?"

"Yes, I do," Bashir straightened up to resume checking the data. "Immediate disruption of the central and peripheral nervous systems…Somatic…Autonomic…Better than seventy-five percent of the neuro pathways were destroyed…."

"Collapse of synoptic patterns was complete and violent…." Sorge nodded along. "Death was instantaneous. Powerful little gadget to say the least. Discounting the skull, the bruising and scrapes along the body are from being stepped on and kicked along the floor -- we have another interesting one who went through a similar form of abuse after death, complete with a positive DNA match -- what we don't have for this one. No identification. Not that we've been able to find -- "

"Wait a minute," Bashir stopped him. "Something's wrong there. I recognize this man myself -- not as Dukat's assailant. But I reviewed his psychological profile for Captain Sisko not an hour before dinner. He's Special Forces Captain Rhome Kirst. Formally assigned as Deputy Task leader to the Cardassian corridor, and reassigned to standard duty in Quark's -- I clearly remember all of this."

"Rhome Kirst," Sorge was looking at Janice. "Who's that fellow you have waiting in the toilet? Garak, you said?"

"Yes," Bashir smiled. "A Cardassian tailor by trade, a spy at heart."

"Photographic memory," Sorge had the point. "All right. Bring him in; it's your morgue. Have him look around, see if he can identify the second assailant. All Janice can remember is someone riding his back, and someone else -- Dukat, was it?"

"Yes, it was Anon," she agreed.

"Splitting the Bajoran's face open with a phaser rifle."

"Who was riding his back?" Bashir had missed hearing about that one.

"Leeta," Janice smiled. "What's this about Captain Rhome?"

"We'll tell you why we're asking…" Sorge moved to another Bajoran about three tables away with a greeting nod for Garak attired in his bio-suit like the rest of them.

"Doctors," Garak returned with a beam for the dead Bajoran. "Ah. Our Captain Rhome -- "

"Wrong," Sorge assured brusquely. 

"I beg your pardon?"

"Let's hope you can do better identifying the second one…" Sorge directed Bashir to his padd and the new fellow he was about to introduce. "This is Captain Rhome."

"I see…" Garak read over Julian's shoulder. "Q86BSF16 -- Quark's #86 Bajoran Special Forces #16…Rhome Kirst. Isn't that interesting?" he smiled at Sorge. "And of great relief to Julian, I've no doubt."

"Not exactly," Bashir said. "I would have preferred to have been wrong about my psychiatric analysis. This man's been dead an hour and a half longer than his impostor -- that puts it just about an hour before dinner. Equally, that means not only did he have to die somewhere other than Quark's, at lunch hour there were two Captains Rhome. The real one somewhere. The impostor at his post in the conference room -- My guess, place of death would be the Cardassian corridor where Rhome showed for duty rotation while the impostor's assignment was being held in suspension pending rotation change. Rhome didn't receive the change of orders, because he couldn't. By that time he was dead."

Garak contemplated the theory. "Oh, but Julian, if the duty assignments were altered to account for the infiltrator at lunch, it's reasonable to presume they were also altered to account for the infiltrator at dinner."

"Except that there'd be little reason to kill him if he wasn't on that corridor -- " Bashir scanned through the analysis. "Execution style, I see -- similar to the other. Pressed to the back of the neck."

"Less sophisticated, that's all," Sorge nodded. "Phaser. Not some gadget. Charring of the larynx caught her eye."

"Good catch," Bashir complimented Janice. "A bit uncommon, but it can happen, especially at that close range…it's definitely a hand phaser. Not a rifle. Impossible. It would have taken his head off…all right. Any others?"

"Not yet," Sorge eyed Garak yet to move beyond the table. "If you want numbers you have them. One hundred and sixteen civilians, sixty-three personnel -- that includes the Klingon officers and Cardassian diplomatic aide Mister Paq."

"Yes, I see that…Twenty-eight screenings, nineteen positive identifications…four and a half hours? That's better than I had hoped for…is that the point Martok's bridge crew was brought in?"

"Sounds about right…what about you?" Sorge reminded Garak. "Locate your second suspect, or are you waiting for him to come to you?"

"In a manner so to speak…" Garak smugly wet his lips, "yes. File identification -- Garak. I took the liberty of requesting a medical screening of Leeta from the triage unit in Quark's. Anticipating potential difficulty with visual identification if the second officer likewise happened to turn up dead."

Sorge snorted. "Is there a reason why you just didn't say so?"

"Of course," Garak continued his smile, "I'm Cardassian."

"You said it, not me…Doctor?"

"Checking…" Janice scanned quickly through the logs. "Much of this is coming up Anon -- no, wait a minute. We have him -- Garak, you're a peach. Q91BSF08…Death consistent with extensive disruptor effects. Secondary analysis revealed inconsistent with multiple fractures of the face…minor fracture of the cervical spine. Question consistent with a fall…I remember this one."

"Upper levels," Sorge waved Garak aside. "They cleared those areas first -- this is him, right behind us -- identification?"

"No, we don't have an identification on him," Janice rejoined them. "He's scheduled for composite screening…Garak? I realize it's difficult to tell without a graphic."

"As neither were we on the upper levels, my dear," Garak studied the mutilated corpse of the right height and size. "That's not saying the man couldn't have gotten up in an attempt to get away -- could he have?"

"Oh, yes, definitely. The cervical fracture is a result of a twisting injury -- such as what could happen with a jarring blow to the face. But it wasn't life threatening."

"No…" Garak said slowly. "The Disruptor, however, clearly was…Interesting the way they managed to destroy his face…I would have to say, yes. This is he. Certainly the right size, and, of course, there's Leeta. I don't recall her attempting to claw anyone else's eyes out."

"Was there evidence other than Leeta's fingernails?" Bashir asked.

"Yes…" Janice read over her shoulder. "Additional samples were positive in several areas including her hair, bodice and palms of both hands."

"Then this is clearly him, my dear," Garak smiled. "Fascinating coincidence that he's also dead. Vicious and unwarranted -- I believe that is the premise behind Sentinel Dukat's incarceration -- to kill an obviously injured man rather than simply arrest him."

His offhand revelation of Pfrann's arrest confused her. "Pfrann's being held in security? Why?"

For stealing a Bajoran's heart, somewhat more literally than his father. Garak had to bite his tongue. "He took his brother's orders to assist Captain Sisko a little too seriously for the liking of Constable Odo -- I wouldn't be concerned. It's my understanding -- at the time I left the security holding area -- from Major Kira's expressive outrage that Commander Worf is in full agreement with her; self defense."

"Then I don't understand why he's being held."

"The nature of the attack, as I said, my dear. We're Cardassian, not Klingon. If we remove someone's heart with the splintered end of a table leg it's vicious and unwarranted."

"Unidentified -- over there," Sorge pointed as Janice shook her head.

"Yes, I realize who he's talking about. I just can't believe Pfrann would assault anyone. He had to at least _think _he was acting in his own defense."

"That's a lot of faith to place in people you've only known a day." Sorge preempted Bashir from unnecessarily going on. He had just spent seven hours locked up in a morgue with the young woman with only the dead and the walls to impress him other than her. He liked her rose colored glasses; not about to take them off and hand them to her. "Have a tendency to do that myself. Who doesn't like to believe they're a good judge of character? As Mister Garak says, I'm sure it will be straightened out."

"Oh, I know that," Janice agreed. "It's hardly something personal against Pfrann. It's all just to do with everything's that's happened. Odo has to follow protocol like everyone else -- like we do. Initial screening. Further analysis when, where and if warranted."

"That's exactly the way it should be," Sorge steered her towards the changing room with a comforting pat of her shoulder. "Breakfast. Veronica will help you plan a picket if this Major Kira can't get this fellow Odo to see the light -- you're welcome to join us, Mister Garak."

"Oh, how kind of you," Garak gushed.

"Not really. I prefer snakes where I can see them; not in the grass. Civilized is denoted by respect and appreciation for life. Not technological ability. Culture is not an excuse. Ask the Mayans."

"An ancient culture of Earth -- extremely advanced for the period," Bashir explained for Garak. "Whose practices included Human sacrifice to their gods."

"Obviously not as advanced as they would like to think," Sorge underscored.

"Oh, I get the point," Garak promised.

"And I get yours," Sorge assured. "Bigotry is bigotry. They can try all they want to lay this at Damar's doorstep. It doesn't belong at his doorstep, and they know it doesn't belong there. I've less tolerance for that sort of thing than I do for fools, politicians and bleeding heart liberals who embrace them -- Not meaning you…" he handed Janice a standard medical jumpsuit. "Meaning the Federation who promoted what Shakaar agreed to and Damar asked for. That's the order of responsibility…we'll leave it at that before I join you in that picket. Five minutes, we'll meet you outside."

"Maybe ten?" Janice turned hopefully to Bashir. "I was going to ask if it would be all right if I stopped by to say hello to Anon?"

Sorge sniffed. "Doctor checking on her patient, or to snitch about this brother of his?"

Janice laughed. "Oh, let me think…"

"Gesture of good will either way," Sorge upheld. "What about it?"

Bashir wasn't quite sure if he was being challenged or asked. It wasn't important really, actually he agreed with him; it was the Human thing to do. "I can't see why not," he activated his com badge to confirm the request with Sisko.

Bashir's interruption couldn't have come at a better time. The high level meeting in progress in the conference room was much more than a study in mere political rhetoric. It was a farce. Discounting Chancellor Gowron of the Klingon Empire's evening long attempt to be included in the Federation, Bajoran and Cardassian triangle, the hastily assembled Federation panel and Shakaar strove to outdo each other not to implicate themselves, while striving to placate the Cardassian Council on screen somewhere in the background at the UFP; their position as simple as the Federation's or Bajor's. They wanted the conference to continue. For all the complaints, lengthy list of demands, Cardassia didn't really care about anything, anymore than anyone else. The Federation equally gracious in sparing itself, Cardassia or Shakaar any need for having to say so by shouldering the responsibility, less any blame, in requesting the conference resume on schedule as quickly as possible following the resolve of the minor breech of security -- the words screeched down Sisko's spine. The resolve as clear and simple as the bottom line. Sweep it under the rug, damn the horde of militants presumed still at large; there wasn't one unidentifiable Bajoran Special Forces officer in the security holding area. What happened to them? Odo didn't know. Shakaar, the UFP, nor Cardassia were interested. Gowron, they ignored. General Martok's invitation to the meeting extended only for the purpose of notifying him of that point. One the Federation Admiral Kawasaki hadn't yet addressed in her hour long commentary.

"Yes, Doctor?" Sisko answered Bashir's call, his voice testy, his patience strained by his effort to keep his temper.

__

"I'm in the morgue. Janice is asking for permission to extend Dukat a message of good will from the Bajoran and Federation representatives. I don't see any harm, but I wanted to check with you."

"That will be fine, Doctor," Sisko rubbed his face, trying to massage away some of the tension. "If you would thank Doctor Lange for me for her consideration and assistance, as well as Doctors Sorge for theirs. It is all very much appreciated."

"She's in the morgue?" Kira's annoyance generated a glance from Sisko and a smile from Dax.

"Apparently still, yes."

"Doctor?" Sisko said.

__

"Yes, I'm here. Did you have something else? I was going to grab a quick bite of something to eat and then see when you might have a chance to go over some of these reports -- a couple of things are reasonably urgent. I hesitate to use the word."

"Actually, if you could join us in the main conference room now."

__

"Oh," Bashir said. _"All right. Let me just collect my notes and I'll be right there."_

"Thank you," Sisko signed off with a nod for Shakaar and Admiral Kawasaki on their respective screens. "My apologies. I neglected to mention to help relieve the station's medical personnel for other duties, Doctor Lange volunteered her skills to aid in identifying victims of the terrorist assault. She has been in the morgue since late last evening acting as assistant to Federation Geneticist Doctor Tracy Sorge, also a volunteer, who was visiting the station from Bajor at the time." He paused there in his own lengthy explanatory asides before finishing. "It is my understanding Doctor Veronica Sorge has been working with the counseling team."

"Not at all, Captain," Shakaar was not shy about accepting the credit or using it. "Just another example, Admiral, of Bajor's willingness to assist in any way."

"What?" Kira's hand hit the table in anger as she jumped up. "You didn't even know anything about it until Bashir called!"

"Major!" Sisko warned.

"Lange's in the morgue, not him!"

"That is irrelevant! Sit down!"

"All right fine, I'll sit," she waved, disgusted with the whole business anyway, particularly Shakaar. A man she thought she knew, and did know was lying. Why, or about what exactly she could not fathom. What she could imagine, she did not want to. It had to be Winn he was covering, not protecting. Why he then was not at least seeking Sisko's advice even if he was hesitant about involving the Federation made no sense at all, especially when he knew who was responsible. He did know. She knew he knew.

"Doctor Lange is my representative, Kira," Shakaar reminded calmly. 

"I know who she is," Kira snapped. "And I know exactly the reason why you chose her."

"Major!" Sisko insisted as Damar chuckled.

"Doctor Lange's compassion is just one of her many attributes," Shakaar ignored Kira to continue with a straight face to Admiral Kawasaki. "All keynotes in her choice as representative." 

"We are quite comfortable with Doctor Lange, First Minister," the Admiral conveyed her panel's equal appreciation. "Confident in her forensic talents as well as her diplomatic skills -- to reiterate, Captain Sisko, we are likewise well satisfied with your security measures taken as they have been detailed to us, and the immediate response of you and your staff to put this unfortunate incident behind us -- "

"Admiral, if you would please!" Sisko's voice held more tolerance than he felt, and it didn't hold much. "There is no reason for you to reiterate anything. The truth of the matter remains that nothing can be behind us when I can't tell you who these men are… At best estimate their numbers -- or even!" he slammed Odo's report down on the table, "what happened to the suspects we believe we remanded to the station's security force."

"Excuse me, Captain, but I remain confused," Shakaar went so far as to shake his head, and didn't Sisko wish he had the ability to shake it for him. "You have 200 Bajoran security personnel presently being detained in your security holding area -- "

"I have four hundred and three!" Sisko picked up the padd to slam it back down.

"I was speaking of the Special Forces," Shakaar replied all too quietly for Sisko's liking.

"Then let's speak about them," he agreed. "Because, quite frankly, First Minister, if I am going to be forced to agree with you, that no member of your 'hand-picked' unit is responsible for the massacre of 150 people -- "

"One hundred and seventy-nine," Bashir submitted from the doorway; Sisko hadn't even heard it slide open.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Anon was asleep in his private quarters along the Infirmary's isolation wing when Janice stopped in to say hello. She left him a short note on a data padd telling him she was there, how she loved him and would talk to him soon. It never occurred to her anyone might read the padd other than Anon; Bashir certainly didn't read it. Much like Dax, he saw nothing extraordinary or odd in Janice's approach or actions. Her thoughtful desire to extend a message of good will to the injured Gul was precisely that; thoughtful. Not merely politically correct. Bashir just naturally assumed the message was written rather than spoken being as Dukat was asleep when he escorted Janice to the room. Had Bashir even the slightest interest in knowing what Janice wrote, it was lost in the juggle of reports Michelle had waiting for him. The ones that included a most outrageous, nearly incoherent request from Kira demanding his psychological support in attacking Odo's accusations of Pfrann having been solely responsible for the murder of some Bajoran terrorist during the riot at Quark's.

"Or someone's psychological support," Bashir scanned Kira's request far too quickly to really make sense out of it. "I think what she's asking for actually is a detailed analysis of why someone would rip another's heart out -- all good reasons, mind you she's expecting me to give her, not excluding a troubled childhood…Support, I believe is the key word here. She's looking for my support of her support of Pfrann Dukat's actions apparently not supported by Odo."

"Why would someone?" Michelle chuckled, not that tearing another's heart out was really a laughing matter; simply Kira's outrage.

"Your guess is as good as mine. About the only reason that comes to my mind is they're quite clearly insane." He kept Kira's request however, stuffing it somewhere close to the bottom of the stack of padds he quite literally poured into his briefcase, somehow managing to clip the attaché close. "Ready?" he smiled at Janice done with scrawling 'get well soon' on padd for Dukat.

"He's sleeping," Janice nodded. "I didn't want to wake him."

"You're as big a coward as I am," Bashir paraphrased an old Earth saying. "Had my fingers crossed all the way that he would be sleeping."

Who also didn't read the note was Michelle Faraday, certainly having little interest in anything having to do with Gul Dukat. Doctor Lange she accepted as a peer of the medical profession though Janice's credentials read archeologist rather than healer. In her heart, and quite clearly also in her mind, Lange was a healer. Michelle did notice that as far as Bashir was concerned, Janice's heart was probably much more on his mind, than her mind.

Who did read the padd was the Bajoran security officer of station descent and just recently cleared by Odo to resume his duty. A duty that found the officer stationed at Dukat's bedside -- likely out of pure spite of Dukat, not Captain Sisko. Though Bashir suspected Odo had his fingers crossed the Bajoran would turn out to be a terrorist, leaving them free of Dukat, as they were free of Mister Paq, with only Damar and Pfrann left to be concerned about.

It wasn't likely however. Far more likely Dukat would wake up and start screaming, not in terror, but simply over finding a Bajoran hovering bedside. Bashir could hear him now; he left to walk Janice to the Replimat before he did hear him.

The Bajoran security officer who picked up the data padd in curiosity did so, not because he was one of Hawk's group of terrorists, but because he was one of First Minister Shakaar's loyal subjects. An unofficial mole above and beyond the official government moles incorporated within Shakaar's Special Forces. Whatever the Bajoran expected to read written by their Neutral representative, he did not expect the words he read. _Traitorous tramp_ was the initial thought coming to the Bajoran's mind, quickly followed by several others. He should kill the Gul while he slept. He would have killed Dukat as he slept except the door slid open to reveal a Federation security officer; Special Forces by rank, large and Capellan by race; it was duty rotation time.

"I've been here twenty minutes," the Bajoran complained.

The Federation officer didn't care. Twenty minutes there, eight hours elsewhere.

"It crossed my mind," the Bajoran stalked out, citing what the Capellan probably suspected, and that was an in-bred desire of all Bajorans to kill the son of Gul Dukat as they wished to kill his father.

The Capellan shrugged, suspecting it was an in-bred desire of many and would continue to be, likely for the next hundred years or so. He likewise did not read the data padd. Merely assumed his post of standing guard over the Cardassian who not had seen to dying in the riot at Quark's.

Outside the Infirmary, walking the Promenade, the Bajoran security officer struggled with thoughts of informing his First Minister immediately of his accidental discovery of their representative's indiscretion with the Cardassian whoremonger Dukat. An impossible train of thinking beyond the communications lock out and high level security measures in place. He didn't know the extent of the betrayal, the point of it. He didn't have any answers to questions Shakaar was certain to ask.

Was he certain to ask? First Minister Shakaar of Bajor's handsome face hardened in a cold mask of anger. If Sisko's preliminary reports were etched on paper rather than data padds he would have crumbled them into balls. As it was he flung the stack of them off his desk. "Damn you!" His curse was for Winn and her political lover Gowron. Determined to destroy him she would force them into a war with Cardassia when she knew the Federation could never protect them, and the Klingon Empire would never protect them, only in lies to gain such a strategic foothold in the Alpha quadrant; Bajor Prime.

"Damn you!" Shakaar's curse was for his radical uncle, sixty years old and still unable to see beyond the sight of his phaser rifle. He was out of his mind, Shakaar Adon, the elder. Out of his mind to demand, threaten, fight, knowing his nephew would never give into him. They needed not the nonsense of Damar, but to reaffirm their Peace Accord with the Cardassian Union, yes, Bajor did need that. As they needed the Federation still six long years after the end of the Cardassian occupation. And, oh, didn't First Minister Shakaar himself occasionally fantasize of a time when Bajor wouldn't need any of them; strong enough to stand on her own.

It was a wild fantasy; as wild as his uncle's, calling himself Anar this decade, the Hawk, some other. Shakaar never thought of Hawk, his youngest surviving uncle of a long dead family. Shakaar never did, and never would, considering Hawk a child; Anar the dangerous one. Anar, the threat. As he had threatened for four months. As he had followed through on his threats, knowing his nephew would never betray him because to betray Anar, Shakaar would betray himself; the family Shakaar was hardly dead. Its scattered small numbers just not so eagerly willing to be as politically correct as the people's hero Shakaar Adon of Bajor. 

"As would your betrayal of me, betray you," Shakaar cursed his uncle one last time before answering his page's hail that Sisko was on the line.

"One hundred and seventy-nine," Sisko thrust his hand out to Bashir for the data padd. "Then you tell me where these men are."

"That includes the Klingon bridge crew and Cardassian diplomat Mister Paq," Bashir whispered in Sisko ear.

"Thank you, Doctor."

"I can't tell you, Captain," Shakaar answered simply. "No more than I can blindly accuse any officer -- "

"Well, I can," Sisko assured, "relieve every Special Forces officer of their duty and have them off of this station within the hour -- which they will be!"

"Unacceptable, Captain," Shakaar apologized. "I have the concerns of far too many civilians at stake to even consider the request."

"To the contrary," Sisko corrected. "The risk to those civilians clearly far outweighs the benefit."

"From terrorists, Captain. Not security personnel…Admiral, if I may…" Shakaar moved his complaining to the Federation Admiral Kawasaki waiting patiently on screen. 

"Well, actually, if I may for a moment -- " Bashir spoke up. "Excuse me, Admiral, but if I correctly understand the question, you should be aware we do currently have three unidentified men in Bajoran Special Forces uniform in the morgue -- "

"And how many Federation do you have?" Shakaar interrupted.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Something else I keep trying to overlook, Admiral," Shakaar returned to her. "I'm not sure how any one can relate a story of such obvious confusion, and then turn around and state so positively these men were Bajoran -- "

"They were Bajoran," Damar scoffed with an eye for Bashir. "What are you looking at? Are you going to accuse me? Is that what you have in all your reports?"

"No, actually," Bashir replied, "what I have in my morgue are three dead Bajorans. What I have in my reports is a detail of 179 dead and 278 injured. I don't think the word story is appropriate."

"Presumption then, Doctor," Shakaar's voice turned caustic. "Three dead suspects is a long way from the estimated number of forty."

"Fifty," O'Brien sent a data padd skidding along the table to Sisko. "Sorry, I didn't realize you didn't have the update…I've got a million of them here."

"Who may or may not have been Bajoran," Dax nodded. "Excuse me, First Minister, but I did witness three Bajoran Special Forces officers fire on the crowd. I think it's a bit more than wishful thinking for them to be the same three bodies Julian has in the morgue…"

"It would be," Odo grunted. "If you include the six apprehended by security in the upper levels of Quark's, as well as the six Mister Worf apprehended, discounting the man killed, you would still be up to twenty -- or thereabouts. You have a choice, First Minister. If you insist none of those men were Special Forces personnel then you have to accept an infiltration, all of whom were Bajoran."

"And there were two more up in the dining room area with us," O'Brien assured. "So now we're up to -- "

"Twenty-one, approximately," Odo agreed.

"Whatever," Kira said. "You don't want to believe they were Bajoran, I don't want to believe it -- it doesn't change anything!" she sputtered at Shakaar. "Redemptorist, the Circle, unless you want to start talking about the Maquis, they were Bajoran."

And there was no way the UFP, Cardassia, or Bajor, each for their own reasons, were going to touch that issue of Maquis. Odo knew that.

"What doesn't change, Kira, is the need for the Special Forces to remain on the station," Shakaar said. "Who can't have it both ways is Captain Sisko -- unfortunately, Captain," he readdressed him. "The intruders are either still at large, or they are not. I, like you, prefer to err on the side of caution that they may be. To deplete the ranks of available security is not the answer."

"Well, where are they, if they're not here?" O'Brien snorted. "Nobody has left this station -- underscore no one."

Shakaar sighed. "I wouldn't know. I am not there. Solely reliant on your reports, Chief, and everyone else's…Admiral, this is getting us no where. While Legate Damar might be hesitant in supporting me, I'm quite sure he is well aware aside from three unidentified Bajorans, there is a Cardassian diplomat who is dead and another in the Infirmary -- "

"And five Klingon warriors!" Martok seethed for the Admiral and Shakaar. "Who you would both like me to believe is the work of one man -- "

"Bajoran," Bashir interrupted.

"Doctor!" Shakaar's fist hit the table on his side of the communication's link. "You can no more state that with certainty than you can support the concept of what a man looks like is who that man is. Again, to issue me some account of a being able to elude capture by a hundred security personnel on his heels -- "

"That is enough!" Sisko barked. "There were no hundred men, First Minister, and what Doctor Bashir can state with certainty is that the child abducted was in fact Bajoran."

"Then, I repeat. The threat is to us, as much as it is to you, Captain," Shakaar assured. "I cannot jeopardize the civilian population of that station -- especially when by your own words _you_ cannot definitively tell _me _who these people are, never mind me being able to tell you."

"A point, First Minister," Admiral Kawasaki cited her panel's response.

"A point if he's innocent," Martok snarled unconsciously in the direction of Damar. 

Damar chuckled. "You look for allegiance from the wrong corner of the arena, Klingon. Who cares which of you is innocent or guilty when who clearly is innocent is the Cardassian Union." He finished with a smile for Sisko; to the dogs with the UFP and their Assembly. 

"Actually," Bashir cleared his throat, "what I can tell you is the abuse committed against one of the Klingon officers after death was not by the hand of the same man -- or by a Bajoran."

"Thank you, Doctor Bashir," both of Shakaar's hands hit his desk in triumph. "Finally, Admiral, the words of an honest man, willing to take a stand."

"That's interesting," Dax murmured to Sisko. "A moment ago Julian was a bigoted liar."

"Interesting is not the word, Commander," Sisko answered coldly.

No, Dax had an idea it wasn't.

"I beg your pardon?" Bashir blinked at Shakaar. "I wasn't aware anyone's honesty was in question. I thought we were all trying to work together -- "

"We are, Doctor," Admiral Kawasaki said. "Do you have an idea of who this other individual aboard the Klingon cruiser may have been?"

Bashir looked at her.

"Do you, Doctor?" Sisko waited along with the rest of them.

"Yes," Bashir sighed. "Simply wondering why I have the feeling that this evidence we are willing to accept -- if not waiting to hear -- or am I mistaken, First Minister, that your argument is based on a theory of planted Bajoran DNA? Due to? What? The man's athletic ability? You may be right. Doctor Sorge supports the physical analysis determination of a man whose strength is slightly greater than that of an average Bajoran. Along with skill, and knowledge of Klingon anatomy. DNA analysis supports the assailant to be a Bajoran male 58-59 years old. A relatively insignificant difference to the initial analysis of the kut'luch…which I believe…" Bashir checked his notes, "placed him at sixty."

"Wrap it up, Doctor," Sisko moved him along. "What does the analysis show as far as any second individual?"

"Someone with the strength of a Klingon," Bashir agreed. "There is no DNA evidence other than Bajoran or Klingon -- though, I wish to point out Doctors Sorge and Lange have completed only one detailed study on one Klingon cadaver-- I'm not sure what Chief O'Brien has been able to determine from the Engineering forensic data," he grinned at O'Brien. "I have about a million reports myself. I'm sure yours is in here somewhere."

"Bajoran and Klingon, that's all," O'Brien assured Shakaar. "The same as it shows the explosion was caused by a Klingon Disruptor on overload -- with communications and helm consoles destroyed prior, and Ops destroyed afterwards. So, no, the only real evidence we have a Bajoran transported anywhere is our own eyes."

Shakaar was calculating in his response. "Your own eyes put a hundred of him on the upper level of the Promenade minutes before, Chief -- "

"Wrong!" O'Brien corrected. "My eyes saw a phaser rifle stuffed in a kid's face! What is this?" he demanded of the lot of them. "Is it me, or is it him?"

"It's him," Kira charged. "Computer records confirm the destination lock to be the Klingon bridge."

"Your systems were sabotaged, Kira…"

"Right!" O'Brien said. "Which _alludes _someone more than a group of _farmers_ had their hands in the pie."

"We're back to that again," Shakaar sighed. "Admiral -- "

"Doctor Bashir," Admiral Kawasaki requested, "is there any DNA evidence to support this suspect aboard the station was Bajoran?"

"I would think even if the Chief can't confirm transport trace particles aboard the bridge…" Bashir turned hesitantly to O'Brien.

"He can't," O'Brien waved. "He can't. Three guesses why he can't…"

"Chief!" Sisko insisted upon giving due respect even if they weren't being given any.

"He_ can_ confirm the transporter trace particles in the security office were Bajoran," O'Brien nodded to the Admiral.

She looked away, to the side, listening to either the Federation panel or the Cardassian Council. "Unfortunately, Captain Sisko," she returned to center screen, "due to the extensive sabotage to the network of the systems matrices we cannot accept any reports as conclusive unless it was conducted by independent methods -- "

"It was independent!" O'Brien screeched. "I used the systems aboard the Defiant for the determination!"

She looked away again; not for very long. "Logic must prevail as the governing factor."

"Okay!" O'Brien surrendered. "Now we know who's running the show back there, don't we?"

Sisko didn't even bother to correct him. 

"It is the decision of the Federation panel, Captain, to honor First Minister Shakaar's request that Bajoran and Federation Special Forces remain as the primary security force throughout the conference, supported by the station's Starfleet and Bajoran security personnel. Again, we wish to stress we find your actions -- "

"Please," Sisko beseeched her, "do not compliment me again, Admiral."

"Exemplary," she finished anyway. "It is the hope, Captain, of the Federation panel that the arrangement of restricted public contact will be continued rather than sequestering the representatives."

"Out of the question."

"If I may first finish, Captain. The request of the Cardassian Civilian Council to include Cardassian officers in the security task force assigned to Legate Damar and his representatives is honored at nine Sentinels and a Task Leader for a total of ten officers to be chosen at Legate Damar's discretion. The Task Leader, as in the instances of Commanders Dax and Worf, will be responsible to report to Constable Odo. With the addition of these men, the panel can see no reason why sequestering should become necessary."

"For the simple reason, Admiral," Sisko nodded, "no one has proven to me that there is any reason whatsoever to believe these men -- whoever they are, whatever species they might be, are satisfied, nor will be, short of stopping the conference _if_ even then! You are wrong in my commendation when what I failed to think of, let alone prevent, was the deaths and injuries of almost 500 largely innocent people -- by the blatant act of a group of terrorists, not at all shy about opening fire on a bar crowded with 2,000 lives!"

She ignored him. He almost damned her to hell and walked out.

"The Federation joins First Minister Shakaar in wishing good will to you, Legate Damar and your representatives."

"Yes, yes," Damar rejected her dribbling. "The choosing of the sentries is Dukat's affair. I trust for his own benefit he'll be able to find ten that meet with his approval."

"When is Gul Dukat expected to be released from the Infirmary, Doctor?" The Admiral looked to finish up quickly.

"Tomorrow?" Bashir imagined. "The vascular repair was completely successful. I plan to dissolve the synthetic grafting protecting the artery in the morning."

"Excellent. We look forward to the conference resuming Thursday morning with a two day extension assumed. If the representatives choose to meet for an abbreviated session tomorrow afternoon, that is their option…To briefly address Chancellor Gowron's petition for the Klingon Empire to be included in the discussion…"

"What?" Kira muttered aloud.

"This request has again been respectfully denied. The Federation concurs with the Bajoran and Cardassian governments; continuing to find these matters internal and pertinent solely to their worlds…" her focus singled out Martok. "The proposed correlation to Klingon interests in the Alpha Quadrant is not recognized to have been satisfactorily demonstrated by the unfortunate events aboard the Klingon bridge. It is the finding of the Federation panel the incident, while concurrent to the security breech aboard the station, is separate and unrelated; not within the control or jurisdiction of Captain Sisko or the combined Federation and Bajoran Special Forces. Thanking Captain Sisko for his assistance in this matter, given this decision, the physical remains of the five Klingon officers will be remanded to General Martok immediately following this meeting. Trusting the Klingon Empire will take the necessary steps to resolve any prevailing internal matters to ensure no further disturbances, no sanctions are imposed against General Martok or his crew… our sympathies are extended to you, General. You remain, as always, a welcome visitor to DS9."

"You joke," Martok scoffed. "You see I am not laughing."

He was not the only one. Sisko was reeling. The Federation's unwillingness to inflame the Cardassians or Bajorans with talks of Maquis or conspiracy apparently did not extend to an unwillingness to inflame the Klingon Empire. Admiral Kawasaki's challenge was almost a dare, an invitation for more trouble, not less.

"One last issue on the agenda, Captain," the Admiral cited. "Sentinel Dukat's detainment by security." 

Sisko had no idea what she meant. His puzzled glance down the table to Odo ended at Kira rearing in rage against the Constable.

"You issued a report to the UFP?" 

"It's a matter of the security log," Odo reminded.

"I don't care what it's a matter of! I told you to release him!"

Odo turned to Sisko. "He killed an unarmed suspect -- "

"Terrorist!" Kira grabbed Odo by the throat of his tunic. "It was self defense!"

"Major!" Sisko demanded.

"Bashir has the record!"

"I do?" Bashir blinked. "Yes, of course…You mean the security medical screenings…"

"So does Cardassia Prime have mine," Damar's jeer advised Sisko. "It seemed more to our advantage not to argue about it at the time."

"I'll just bet it didn't." Kira snatched the data padd away from Bashir. "Not the security analysis, the medical log."

"Actually, it's in both," Dax accessed the information for Sisko, handing him the padd. "Sentinel Dukat apparently killed a suspected Bajoran terrorist following security clearing the area for evacuation of the injured."

"Admiral…" Shakaar immediately responded to the charge. His tune changed now that a Bajoran officer was declared dead by the hands of some Cardassian, rather than the other way around.

"One moment, First Minister," Sisko requested impatiently, "if I may first be allowed to read…" he looked up from the padd to Worf. "Mister Worf?"

Worf sighed. "I have read both Major Kira's and Constable Odo's accounts -- "

"I am asking you," Sisko assured. "You were the senior officer in the area. Is there a reason why you just did not simply disarm Sentinel Dukat as well?"

Worf hesitated, uncertain himself as to why he had delayed. 

"Tell him," Kira ordered Bashir.

"Me?"

"Will you just explain it to him!"

"The psychology of mob mentality?" Bashir guessed with a quick look over her written request buried in his mountain of logs. Highly doubting if she meant Worf's succumbing to the rules of the Klingons' gladiatorial tradition of prizefighting. "Or Worf's failure to intervene?"

"We do not interfere," Martok boasted. "The actions of Worf and the battle is not in question. It is the assault upon me -- without provocation," he maintained to Sisko. "Damar lies and the Federation and Bajor swear to it -- "

"Damar has nothing to say about it!" Kira barked. "He wasn't even there!"

"No, but I can comment," Damar's lecherous smile made her stomach churn, reminding her of all the people who may not understand her reasoning behind waving a sword in Dukat's defense, she was at the top of her own list. 

"So can I," Shakaar insisted his way back into the discussion. "What is this about Dukat killing a Bajoran suspect?"

"The panel finds no justification to the claim," Admiral Kawasaki moved quickly to state the Federation's position. 

"I'll make that determination," Shakaar corrected.

"Oh?" Kira rebutted coldly. "Five minutes ago they weren't Bajoran."

Martok laughed. "She speaks the truth. They were and are Klingon. Don't you recall? Klingon."

"That is an exaggeration, General," Worf rolled his eyes. "As inaccurate as this insistence of assault."

Martok looked at him. "Twice you challenge me?"

"Twice I speak the truth," Worf assured. "You attempted to provoke Sentinel Dukat with insults knowing how angry he was."

"He was protecting his brother!" Kira firmly adhered to her erroneous belief.

Odo grunted. "He wasn't even aware of his brother's injury."

"I wouldn't necessarily call that accurate either," Dax mentioned to Sisko. "He was certainly aware of the threat of potential injury at the time."

"He never should have been involved, Commander," Sisko's words were for her; his eyes still for Worf; his question for Bashir. "Doctor?"

"Almost afraid to say anything," Bashir acknowledged. "Risking having my own words twisted, I can't help thinking of someone else's. Culture is not an excuse. You can't cite Dukat as guilty of murder on the grounds he is Cardassian, not Klingon."

"Thank you!" Kira said.

"Don't thank me," Bashir requested. "I'm not at all comfortable with the act, we'll call it. Professionally, there is validity to the argument of Dukat's standing rank of Sentinel. His thinking at the time -- whether it be a result of mob mentality or personal concern for his brother…And yes, his age, which can be a factor -- common sense wise, at least, it should be. It's almost ludicrous to think someone would prosecute a seventeen year old sentry while failing to impose sanctions against a mature high ranking officer -- "

"Such as a General?" Martok sneered.

"Yes," Bashir nodded. "Absolutely. You may like to think you have no responsibility, but you do. For the actions of your men who attempted to color the events aboard your bridge, and apparently also in the fiasco with Dukat…I concur with Worf and Major Kira," he concluded for Sisko. "In the wake of the terrorist attack, the internment of Sentinel Dukat approaches the absurd."

"Release him," Sisko instructed Odo.

"Understood," Odo rolled his eyes.

"Thank you, Captain," Admiral Kawasaki ended the Federation's participation in the caucus, wasting no time in signing off.

Less any formal apology to the Cardassian Union, Bashir noticed. He sat at the head of the conference table, facing the blank forward viewer screen, feeling the scrutiny of several pairs of eyes. "I'm sorry," he said finally to Sisko. "You can't single Dukat out. I disagree as emphatically with that, as I do personally with his actions."

"No argument there, Doctor," Sisko looked to Shakaar still on screen from Bajor.

The First Minister was cool in his offering. "Why seek to needlessly inflame an already inflamed situation by harping on the issue of Sentinel Dukat's revenge?"

"Quite frankly, First Minister," Sisko dared to speak the truth, "look to your own motives before you dare to comment on another's."

"Are you accusing me -- " Shakaar rose from his seat to an outraged stand.

"Of the impudence of washing your hands, damn the general safety and concerns of others, oh, yes!" Sisko condemned. "Any one of those officers so much as blink wrong, and I will be on record accusing you of far more. From sanctioning, to support, to design!"

"I'll have to take my chances. To do otherwise I would be supporting the interests of a few over the many," Shakaar signed off.

"I'll second that," Odo supported the First Minister's choice to exit and the prevailing verdict of how the interests of the few did seem to be ranking far above those of the many. "In more ways than one."

"With damn few exceptions, Constable," Sisko brought Odo up quick and short. "Calling it the way you see it is not a defense -- or an excuse," he denounced Worf's apathy harshly. "The responsibility you accept is no one's but your own. To the devil with his reasoning, Sentinel Dukat could have as easily been the one who ended up in the morgue. Is that understood?"

"It is."

"Good!" Sisko turned to Damar. "Unless you want to find yourself with your own one way ticket out of here, you will exercise control over your staff, your crew -- not excluding yourself."

"Empty words, Sisko," Damar chuckled. "You know as well as I -- "

"Try me!" Sisko dared him. "That goes for you, General, as well. While on my station, in my world, you play by my rules. Willful manipulation of the facts is anarchy by any other name. It stops here and now…As does the rage." He straightened up with the best advice of all, for them all; himself no exception. Drained and exhausted by the battle behind him and the knowledge of the one he knew waited in front. "Righteous or not, ladies and gentlemen, the fact remains we succeed together as a whole. Allow them to divide us and we may as well surrender now. Call it want you want to, I shouldn't have to explain to any of you the premise behind a cat and mouse game…Is there anything General Martok needs to know, Doctor, before you release his officers to him?"

"Not that I can think of." 

"Within the hour, General," Sisko anticipated. "If you would excuse us now."

Martok stood up; a familiar insult for Worf dripping off his lips. "For two years I have not heard the words of Gowron citing you for the traitor and coward that you are, perhaps I should start listening to them again."

Worf's failure to rise aggravated Martok even more; he walked out. Sisko was preoccupied and irritated with having to continue to include Damar in what he considered to be a senior staff meeting. He couldn't exclude the Legate, however. It had far too much to do with him. More than Sisko realized following Bashir's hesitant mentioning of the DNA analyses of the Klingons and the one completed autopsy that was specific in identifying Bajoran blood samples. The point that Martok was aware of the findings did not supersede the UFP's steadfast refusal to acknowledge a Bajoran controlled militant group.

"Pseudo-military, anyway," Bashir expressed his opinion beyond asking what to do as far as supplying Martok with the information collected; what should be standard protocol. However, due to that issue of existing Bajoran DNA, if Sisko followed normal procedure rather than adhering to the UFP's declared findings, he would be guilty of going over the heads of the panel; possibly even espionage.

"I'll have to think about it, Doctor," Sisko reserved making any such controversial decision for a later time -- specifically when Damar was not present.

"Oh, quite," Bashir supported. "Certainly reasonable to think…"

"Kamikaze," O'Brien shifted in his seat. "Sorry. That's just what comes to mind."

"All those years of holographic reenactments, yes." Bashir grinned in fond memory. "Certainly a fair analogy."

"Suicidal," Sisko explained to Damar.

He sneered. "Like a Klingon."

"I'll go along with that," Odo grunted. "Would be the sort of group they'd hire."

"Are we going somewhere with this?" Kira fumed.

"Not really," Odo said. "Simply attempting to affix a label."

"Maquis," Kira glued one on there for him. "It's a Bajoran Maquis outfit. Face facts."

"Reasonably a little more radical than its predecessors with strong religious overtones," Odo attempted to soften the blow for Damar.

"We're radical!" Kira reminded. Needlessly, Odo might add.

"And a deeply religious society," Bashir announced, also needlessly. "I don't think either comparison is too farfetched."

"No, Doctor," Sisko agreed. "There are marked similarities to many military organizations. The Maquis is only one of them."

"Right down to the skills employed," O'Brien assured.

"And demonstrated for our benefit," Sisko also agreed with that. "As I said, the point of a cat and mouse game."

"Grandstanding," Odo snorted.

"A frightening thought, Constable," Sisko admitted. "We need to focus our attention on where these people are. Fading into a crowd to escape detention following an attack is one thing. They have to regroup at some point, somewhere -- "

"As Special Forces security," Odo maintained. "You can't identify them because you can identify them -- if you follow me."

Sisko did. If that was accurate and they were the Bajoran Special Forces in part or in whole, then Shakaar reigned as the probable employer, not Winn or Gowron. Out of the question. More than the psychology didn't fit. What did fit was a group separate and apart from the Special Forces, capable of infiltrating when necessary. Shakaar's refusal to acknowledge that reasonable presumption did not suggest necessarily sympathy, it did affirm in Sisko's mind the First Minister unequivocally knew who was accountable. It was feasible Shakaar knew all along of a specific threat that he chose not to reveal; instead adamant that the majority of combined security forces be Bajoran. Failing to prevent the Threat Force from acting, he remained adamant in maintaining the Special Forces. That, to Sisko, suggested full knowledge would also be found among the scattered hierarchy of the Bajoran security directly acting under Shakaar's orders. First Minister's choice of continuing to go it alone suggested Kai Winn as the power behind the Threat Force. Gowron hovered in the background of Sisko's mind, likely only because he did not trust the Klingon Chancellor from capitalizing on the situation, twisting and shifting the blame to Damar's corner. Sisko eyed the Cardassian Emperor seated alone on his side of the conference table. Ultimately it was Damar's fault for having proposed the conference -- to which neither the Federation or Bajor had to agree. As much as Damar might be attempting to use them, they were attempting to use him and 500 people lay dead or injured in the Infirmary and makeshift morgue before the close of the first day. That by far overshadowed the promising potential of the morning and afternoon sessions of talks. Grandstanding? The power the Threat Force wielded and chose to reveal alongside Shakaar's covert efforts was conceivable only because Sisko was forced to conceive it. They were Maquis. A new and deadly version of an old enemy. Likely comprised of surviving members of the original organization who gave more than a fair demonstration of their military and cutthroat skills.

"'War's a brain-spattering, windpipe-slitting art,'" Sisko quoted another one of those duly applicable lines from the renowned Human poet Lord Byron's work _Don Juan_, half listening to Bashir debate the issue of identity with Odo.

"What?" Bashir looked up.

"Nothing," Sisko shook his head. "You were saying something about the three unidentified Bajorans?"

"Yes. Specifically about the one man we can identify -- Captain Rhome Kirst -- "

"He's the officer Julian reviewed for duty reassignment," Dax refreshed Sisko's memory.

"No," Bashir begged a chance to finish what he was trying to say. "He's the officer I believe was murdered on the Cardassian corridor."

CHAPTER TWELVE

The corridor was silent and waiting. Her security misleadingly kept intact by the flickering threatening energy of her force fields engaged at either end when Sisko and his officers exited the turbolift to begin an initial sweep of the area. Damar was apprehensive; Odo wouldn't go as far as claiming the Legate to be nervous. Though he probably should be. If Damar lived to retire from his reign in exile as his predecessor Dukat before him had rather than die at the foot of his throne, he would be the second of only two Cardassian Emperors in recent times granted such a benevolent reprieve. The Cardassian Union, Klingon Empire, for that matter the Romulan Star Empire, were more alike than the three of them cared to admit. 

"Ion," O'Brien identified the distortions in his readings in tune with Worf's nod. "The field's flooded -- I can't get a reading through this crap."

"Bring them down," Sisko directed.

"Well…" Dax moved up to him as Worf and Odo moved to the security panels to disable the fields. "It's either a malfunction…"

"Deliberate, Commander," Sisko promised, "most assuredly."

"You can say that again," Kira answered Odo's glance down the corridor towards the lingering appearance of a force field at the south end near the junction of a second corridor. "Holographic projector has been activated."

"Yes…" Odo drawled. "Isn't that interesting? Of course the turbolift is at the north end. So while that projection might be attractive, I don't see where it would detour anyone's entrance or egress."

"They didn't want to be disturbed," Dax solved the mystery of why ion fairly nicely.

"Yes," Odo said. "Presuming the ion stream was for their benefit to avoid detection, versus enacted for our benefit."

"To avoid detection," Dax also summed that theory up rather neatly. "It's all relative."

"So it is," Odo grunted. "Relative to a containment of ion six times the standard level. I'm not sure how much 'avoidance' played a role."

"We'd have to have reason to look."

"I thought we had a reason." Odo ogled Damar still noticeably uncomfortable with pursuing Bashir's theory; he could still understand why, he thought. It was something more than unnerving to propose the enemy could lie in wait so close. It was sheer luck the intruders had bigger and better places in mind to drive their point home instead of settling for the assassination of Damar or Dukat. It didn't have to be that way, and his Emperor knew it. The answer to why it was, was not one Odo liked anymore than Sisko. Regardless of Commander Dax's ruminations over who might be the actual target, the attack was clearly directed against all three; the Federation, Bajor, and Cardassia. Mere assassination of the Cardassian Emperor would not have been nearly as satisfying as knocking the pins out from under everyone. Refusal to cancel the conference almost guaranteed it was not over yet.

"Well, at least it supports the premise of infiltration -- from the beginning," Odo said. "Security would not have overlooked the presence of ion."

"Security hasn't been anywhere near here for hours." Kira was back from her hobble down the corridor.

"No, _security _hasn't," Odo acknowledged with emphasis and a look down at her swollen ankle constricted by her boot.

"Infirmary," Bashir reminded.

"It's fine."

"That's an order, Major," Sisko interjected.

"All right, it's an order," Kira had other things on her mind. "It's here. Whatever it is, it's here. Replacing the force field with a hologram gave them freedom to other corridors. The ion was to distort any readings…"

"Except of ion," Bashir said. "Not exactly undetectable."

"Covered that part," Odo replied. "Doubtful if it was in the plan for either Damar or Dukat to return."

"So the Bajoran terrorists didn't bother either?" Bashir moved slowly along the walls with Dax.

"Why risk it?" she shrugged. "We don't need ion to confirm there's been a security breech. We have Quark's."

"True."

"What?" Damar said hostilely to Odo's continued surveillance. "I've told you, my limited recollection of your parade of sentries is restricted to a singular incident of testing the supposed security fields."

"Yes, well," Odo said, "apparently you missed the part about hoping for a rotating group of intruders rather than a parade. And there are no security tests authorized during times of occupancy -- one would assume we would conduct them prior to occupancy."

Damar set to thinking about that, up to and including thinking of a reason to excuse his lack of attentiveness to his guards and his visible distress. Odo was tempted to ask him to stop thinking before they had another elaborate farce on their hands; this time designed to save Damar's face rather than Martok's crew. His Legate couldn't save face. For a man who embraced his master Dukat's sadistic side, ruling by intimidation and instilled fear, Damar was stupid not to question men he didn't know when he couldn't trust men he did.

Odo was wrong. Damar's failure to pick up on the anomalous activity going on under his nose had nothing to do with falling short of his master's ingrained paranoia. Far more to do with being preoccupied with his master's sons who he remained willing to throttle the life out of with his bare hands and would, given the chance. In retrospect Damar knew exactly why security failed to pick up on any suspicious activity from transporters, to phasers, to holographic fields. They weren't security, and they likely picked up on everything. Quite unlike him. Damar wracked his brains trying to think of something he did notice beyond the tolerant and agreeable expression on the Task Leader's face.

"Anar," he pronounced. Seeing a young man, roughly his age in his mind's eye; less than half his ponderous size, around his height with brown hair and an ear cuff whose family mark he did not recognize. There was a taller, larger Bajoran, perhaps ten years older, standing next to the Task Leader. Another between their two sizes and ages, standing on his right. It was the one Rhome from the conference room at lunch time. His rank wasn't Captain though, it was something else. Deputy. He was nervous, opposed to the Leader's tranquillity and the other one's silence.

"All right, I'll bite," Odo took his chances Anar might be something other than some obscure Cardassian cuss word.

"_Captain _Anar," Damar submitted the recollected rank and name of the last Security Captain posting control over the corridor just prior to leaving for dinner last evening. "Your Rhome was acting Deputy. He stayed behind with three others -- I complained, if you recall," he smirked suddenly, not having to save face after all. The one who might have to was Odo for refusing to listen to the complaint about an unanticipated change of guard. 

"Hm. Wrong change of guard," Odo admitted that much, ogling Sisko in head to head conference with the Chief and Kira. Commander Dax and Dr. Bashir continuing their diligent scans of the corridor, square meter by square meter in hopes of detecting something organic among the invisible ion particles distorting their readings. 

"Yes," Worf said from behind Odo with marked affirmation. "Captain Anar. He was the Task Leader of the station's Bajoran force to whom the group of suspects were remanded."

"Your group of suspects, apparently," Odo replied. 

"Yes," Worf agreed. "Naturally."

"Yes, well, as naturally the Task force assigned here was Special Forces not station security," Odo stepped to bring this reputed Captain Anar to Sisko's attention while Worf puzzled over the portion of the conversation between Damar and Odo he had missed.

"Chief?" Sisko hoped for the best.

"We've got some kind of energy discharge. You want to call it a phaser, we'll call it a phaser." 

"Good," Damar approved of any hasty decision, still failing to see the need for the exercise. "It's not as if you're trying to prevent something from happening, Captain."

"No, we're gathering data," Bashir rejoined them.

"The point is why?" Damar insisted. "I believe I would have heard a phaser discharge and noticed one less mannequin."

Mannequin was a good word. Sisko eyed the standing row of unoccupied, sealed cabins, thinking about Bashir's suggestion of an officer caught off guard by his stand in. The time of death put Legate Damar and Gul Dukat still on the corridor. "Open them," he instructed Worf. "You were about to say something, Constable?"

He was. "Task Leader Anar. Two different suspects, same identity, or same suspect, change of uniform. Bold either way -- though I wouldn't think bold enough to give us his name. If it's Bajoran, I've never heard it."

It was a new one for Sisko also. "Group identity perhaps? Major?"

"It's not Bajoran," Kira agreed. "Possibly an acronym for their organization, yes; I'll think about it."

"Or possibly some other culture. I'll check it out," Odo suspected more than the compiled list of probabilities would be impractical. "Think you would be able to recognize him?" he chanced asking Damar.

"Generally unremarkable and disinterested," Damar assured. 

"Him or you?" Odo turned away with Dax's excited call for Benjamin.

"It's definitely Bajoran," Bashir's laser cut though the carpeting to remove a small sample of the material stained with organic residue.

"Excellent, Doctor." Sisko waited for the Chief's determination of any transporter trace; it was there. Ten hours post, easily. What wasn't there was any indication of a phaser discharge; as was the computer console clean of any activity.

"It's probably safe to presume Rhome was killed in the corridor." Dax was aware much of Sisko's concerns in gathering facts quickly lay with an expected new barrage of complaints from the Cardassian Union. The first series had already resulted in ten Cardassian sentries being added to the roster; not exactly what Benjamin had in mind.

"Either way it puts both Damar and Dukat here," Sisko was scowling at the cabin immediately across the way; Dukat's. And Damar's not two doors away. "Open them up."

"What?" Damar blustered immediately with the prospect of getting caught by evidence he would not be able to explain.

"Humor us, Legate," Sisko appealed. "We wouldn't want the same thing happening again."

"Which it won't. Not with my security," Damar's registered protest still got him nowhere. He settled for having to gamble on denial and liberal accusations of a conspiracy. Both turned out to be unnecessary. Explanations for the condition of Dukat's quarters beyond the Bajoran terrorists never entered into the equation.

"Possibly not a bad idea," Dax succumbed to agreeing a few added sentries might not be a bad idea when they entered Dukat's cabin to find it in a moderate state of disarray, from an overturned chair or three, to a broken lamp or two, to a cracked computer display.

"Yes," Odo said.

The Chief was more to the point. "What the heck happened in here?"

"Boys will be boys?" Dax picked up what may have once been the missing fourth chair, now reduced to an interesting mass of sculptured alloys.

"Transporter test article," Sisko nodded. "Chief, check the display."

He was checking; not needing to do much more than activate it. "Bingo. Here's your control center -- one of them, anyway," he verified his tricorder readings. "Residuals for both transporter and phaser activity."

"Well, everything but the phaser discharge makes sense," Bashir agreed. "Utilizing Dukat's quarters is one thing. But Rhome couldn't possibly have been killed in here."

"Why not?" Odo grunted, thinking of their Gul Dukat who they would probably have had to tie down to keep him from being involved in everything, everywhere. These other two, Damar and Anon, could apparently have a parade come down the hall and never notice. 

"Four," O'Brien reminded, lest they forget there were two more pairs of Cardassian ears and eyes, equally unobservant; one of them also named Dukat.

No one had forgotten. "Well…" Dax smiled diplomatically, "I think we all know Mister Paq was for show."

"Um, hm," Odo said to Kira. "And the other one's excuse? Other than his tender age and sensitive moods?"

She ignored him even though it was accurate to say by age twelve she was active in the Resistance and had given up late afternoon naps quite some time before that. "Bashir?"

Bashir shook his head. "There's traces of Bajoran DNA on the console as expected, but other than that -- nothing. I'm sorry, because, yes, if it wasn't for the failed test article, it could look as if there had been a fight in here."

"There still may have been." Sisko wasn't convinced the phaser firing was just for show and that they didn't have another body in the morgue that ended up in Quark's; not started out there.

"Well, he or she wasn't killed here," Bashir maintained the room was relatively free enough of ion distortion to ensure reasonably accurate screenings.

"No, likely only stunned," Sisko surmised. "Full analysis, Chief, Mister Worf, as before -- Dax," he preempted Bashir's participation, handing the responsibility to Dax.

"Oh, quite," Bashir grinned at Kira. "I believe we have a date."

"Yes. As well as General Martok's crew, " Sisko agreed. "Regarding Sentinel Dukat's release -- "

"I'll take care of it," Kira was abrupt and insistent.

Damar snorted, not having to say anything more. It wasn't very likely Kira would find her loyalty to Ziyal reciprocated by the siblings.

"That will be fine, Major." Sisko corresponded in choosing to overlook Kira's tone and Damar's unspoken insinuation. "Once Gul Dukat has been informed of the panel's decision and Cardassian security has reported for duty to Odo. Until then, Sentinel Dukat remains in protective custody -- in his own best interest, Major," he cited more than the obvious state of his quarters as example. There was also General Martok to be kept in mind.

"At all times, Constable," Sisko stressed, not to play favorites as far as who was more capable than whom at making things appear different than they were; which they weren't. Not here. Dukat's quarters looked like they had been used, not necessarily abused. A scuffle possibly between the intruders and an uninvited guest, likely a second security officer following Dukat's and Damar's departure from the corridor for Quark's and that destiny. Random transporter tests; one of which clearly failed. It was all rather cut and dried. The Bajoran effort was to get out of there, destroying what evidence they could that might identify them, and not worrying about the evidence that would implicate them. Odo highly doubted if an attempt to implicate Damar and his Cardassians even crossed their minds.

"Sorry to disappoint you," Odo expressed condolences to Damar who was a little quieter in his clear disapproval than he might have thought the Emperor would be, but nothing more suspicious than that.

"On the contrary, Constable," Damar turned on his heel to exit along with the rest of them, "it's you who disappoint me."

"You'll get over it," Odo's interest was still piqued by Kira. "Want to take care of notifying Dukat also -- since you'll be there?"

She looked at him. "What's the matter with you?"

"Nothing. What's the matter with you?"

She couldn't answer that…or maybe she could. She eyed the broad back of Damar strutting down the corridor for the turbolift. "I don't trust him."

"Who does?"

"That's the point, isn't it?" she insisted.

Odo supposed if she meant there was nothing to stop Damar from wishing the terrorist attack had turned out more to his advantage; there wasn't. There also wasn't anything to stop Anon or Pfrann Dukat from wishing the same. Individual or general threats to society, both brothers were still threats. One proven quick to pull a dagger, the other proven quick to use one. Something nagged at the back of Odo's mind about the Infirmary business Sunday night. Now wondering if Anon had pulled Martok's dagger in threat, or simply before his brother did. He had an idea he was right in thinking both. 

"Dukat I can handle," Kira decided, either meaning Pfrann specifically or the enigma in general.

"Apparently," Odo agreed how she thought she could. That didn't explain why.

She felt responsible. Not just for the Dukat brothers, Lange also. She hobbled away from Odo, feeling the brush of Damar's uniform against her arm as she stood next to him in the turbolift.

"On the other hand," Odo supposed there was nothing to stop Kira from wishing things had worked out a little differently at the close of Federation-Dominion war with Damar as dead as Ziyal. So there was an explanation for her steadfast allegiance to Dukat's brood after all. It wasn't Dukat she upheld, it was Damar she denounced.

"This is unbelievable," O'Brien scanned through the display setup with its reasonably clean gateway to just about everywhere. It was several hours work, just like on the Promenade. The intruders moved in the moment Damar and Dukat did, if not before them. "You're telling me no one noticed anything? I'm not talking about the console -- I'm talking about anything. You've got six guards walking you to your quarters, you've got six different guards when you come out of your quarters. What did Damar think we were doing? Rotating them every twenty minutes? We're talking sense here. Get some common sense."

"Well…" Dax hated to be the one to say it but, "actually what Damar and Dukat were doing was following orders not to interfere."

"A fine time they picked," O'Brien snorted.

"This is true," Dax smiled at Worf, anxious for a chance to ask him privately what actually had happened between Martok and Pfrann Dukat. Not because of Kira's or Odo's dickering. But because Worf's evasion of Benjamin's questions was just so unlike him.

"You're in luck," Bashir zippered Kira's feet up inside this lovely pair of air-cushioned lunar boots. "With the number of fractured ankles we've had, you might have had to settle for some old fashioned splinting until we could replicate a pair your size."

"You call this luck?" Kira critically eyed her legs sticking out stiff and straight in front of her; the thick, spongy cylinders encircling her calves to her toes. "I'm six inches shorter than when I came in here, and my ankles weren't this fat when I was pregnant."

"Perhaps not six," Bashir handed over her surviving left boot that did have a reasonably high stacked heel of about three inches. "And one would certainly hope your ankles weren't this size -- less than half," he winked. "You just couldn't see them. I should also point out, not negating the value of elevation beyond a wonderful ploy for sympathy and having people fetch and carry for you, your knees can bend."

She knew they could bend. "Why do I have to wear two?"

"To keep your gait level and relieve the strain you've put on your back hobbling around for the last ten hours -- come on," he helped her down off the examining table. "Forty-eight hours and you'll be as mobile as you ever were. Until then, you're a great deal more mobile than you would be without them -- how do they feel?"

"Comfortable and fat," she grumbled.

"Perfect. A little practice and you'll forget you're even wearing them."

"If I'm not back with a broken neck." Kira slid carefully for the door. "I know, bend. I'm bending. They're not."

She graduated to marching, mastering a slapping, flatfooted tramp by the time she reached the security holding area. Seeing Pfrann behind the force field of his isolation cell she knew she was right and Odo was dead wrong; she could handle him. She could talk, knowing what to say and what not to and even how to walk with him; relaxed and unhurried by his swaying, sauntering stroll, slowed to keep pace with her. He was taller than his father, or maybe he wasn't. Kira remembered the flat cushioned soles of her lunar boots. Somewhere between the time she changed shoes, Pfrann achieved the height of Martok with the top of Kira's head dropping to just below his chest. 

It didn't matter though. He was hardly intimidating; barely an adult. The functional, simplistic design of the Cardassian uniform, on him, looked as if he was wearing his father's shirt. The slashing, straight collar of his tunic accentuated the narrowness of his broad shoulders; the protective plate shielding his prominent breastbone unsupported by muscle, rose sharply pointed. Without testing his pagh, Kira knew his life force was strikingly similar to Ziyal's. Passive, gentle and smoothly flowing, Ziyal was capable of rearing in blinding rage against the father she idolized as Pfrann was capable of rearing viciously and unforgiving against an enemy. They were both still Cardassian. One male, one female. One whole, one half. They were both still their father's children and right now this one looked about as dangerous as any other frightened and confused seventeen year old.

Desperate, deep concern for his brother haunted his yellow eyes; shook in the trembling nervousness of his hands. Separating the two of them had been shattering. Pfrann was surprised to see Kira, secretly relieved to find her standing there. Voiced concerns over her presence and involvement had to do with terrified apprehension over Anon's reaction; far less severe than he had feared. The relationship between their father and Kira Nerys deemed potent and lethal by Anon, failed to impress itself upon him. If there was a mystery, he didn't see one. Less interested in proving, disproving or even wondering about one. His father was his father. Whatever his father did, he did. The headache Anon strove to protect him from was his own. What Pfrann expected of Major Kira Nerys he got. Acknowledgment and recognition. Offers of assistance waiting to be accepted. She was useful. For whatever her own reasons, Pfrann ardently concurred with Kira' s belief there was no difference between him and Ziyal. Equally entitled to the same treatment and helping hand. 

"Come on," Kira's hand beckoned him out from the solitary confinement of his cell into the freedom of the corridor.

Pfrann's hesitation was brief. Immediately transforming from teary-eyed child to boastful self-confidence as he crossed the threshold, falling into his father's familiar slow saunter beside her with a provocative swish of his head and hips. "Aren't you afraid I'll escape?"

Kira bit back her laugh. To save herself the trouble of having to chase after him down the Promenade she handed him a padd to review along with her assurance. He had a position and therefore status. She talked to that part of him. "You won't escape -- that's a summary of the situation. An agreement has been reached for the induction of ten sentries -- Damar said Dukat would be the one to take care of that?"

"Yes, that would be Anon's decision," Pfrann forgot about being impish; eagerly accepting the chance to bring himself current with their standing.

"You can discuss it with him," Kira nodded.

She was wrong. There was nothing to discuss. Pfrann knew what his brother's decision would be already; he knew what it was. When Anon saw this? Summaries or details, there were two glaring errors Pfrann spotted immediately. One was the jumbled nonsense about their quarters. The other was a computer generated picture of one of the Bajoran's responsible for Anon's assault; Anar's deputy Dak'jar. That was not possible…unless? Anar's Dak'jar was Anar's Mister Damar? A traitor. If that was true Pfrann knew immediately who was behind the attack even if he didn't know their names. The Maquis. Janice as much in danger of a second attempt as either of them. Anon would stop thinking at Janice. That was another relationship Pfrann didn't fully comprehend other than he knew it was real. It existed. Not imaginary in its potency or control. 

"Are we going to the Infirmary?" Pfrann looked up from the padd to the direction their walk was taking them.

"Yes," Kira smiled. "You can't be remanded to your quarters until the Cardassian security force is in place."

She had the two of them confused. He was the Sentinel. Anon was the officer and commander their father played at being when he grew tired of playing at being something else. Pfrann's impish, fiendish feature resurfaced momentarily. His regarding sly glance over Kira ended at her fatty, cushioned feet. She walked like she had two broken ankles. The picture was comical and he laughed; aware he felt comfortable in being able to do so. His father apparently did also until he grew tired of her distractions, reaffirming her status of an enemy. Her stamina and spirit an enraging example of Bajoran disobedience and refusal to submit to a superior species. Their relationship was a power struggle, not a love affair. Entrenched, and likely to continue until the day one or the other finally died.

Kira didn't have either Pfrann or Anon confused with each other; with Mikor, possibly, yes. She couldn't decide if the troublesome son Dukat had infrequently spoken of was Mikor, as she had assumed it was, or was instead Pfrann -- who snickered before he laughed. Burying his amusement behind the padd when he stopped abruptly to turn away from her for a shortened spell of raucous laughter. 

"I know," Kira assured before he offered some inane comment in excuse, "I look like I'm ready to take a walk across a zero-gravity field."

"Just so you know," Pfrann shrugged, it not really mattering to him; why should it? Anon was the one with the crazy ideas from their mother to their father, to Tora Naprem, to Ziyal, to her, Kira Nerys, and now to Janice. Discounting Janice, who Pfrann did like even if he couldn't understand the extent of Anon's attraction, Anon should spend as much time worrying about things like Damar blasting him away with a phaser as easily and without remorse as he had blasted their sister Ziyal. Anon had their father's arrogance and belief of matchless power; lacking only his ability to play games. Their game. Them. The infamous Us against Them. It wasn't too easy to win games you didn't know how to play.

There were almost as many guards in the isolation ward of the Infirmary as there were posted along the security holding cells. Anon's room was at the end of the line of quartered injured suspects patiently and impatiently waiting out the slow and tedious process of identification. He was the other side of Pfrann's Dukat. The creature Kira hated. Brutally cold and sadistic, controlling and power mad. She knew how to talk to him as well. Exactly what to say. So did he.

"Don't you knock?" Anon was curt, the heat in the room suffocating when Kira entered to find him reclining in a chair like a heavily pregnant woman. The stiff position insolent and uninviting, the abdomen he protected, while not cumbersomely swollen, had been stabbed much to his discomfort and annoyance. He wasn't pain-free and fine as Bashir pronounced. He was complaining and uncooperative as any other self-respecting Cardassian would be. Seeing Kira made his vile mood worse.

Seeing him, Kira had to agree with Quark. He did look like a muscle-bound bullfrog with his thick neck lost and folded inside the powerful rise of his shoulders. The elaborate, some would say unattractive ecto design of the Cardassian structure largely confined to the skull and thoracic region, he remained decidedly not Bajoran without his shirt. A man, not a child. This was no fledgling of Dukat's poised on the brink of adulthood. This was a Cardassian fully grown. Kira yanked the padd Anon worked over out of his hand, tossing it on the bed. "You're supposed to be convalescing, not redefining the universe."

She was out of her mind; insane as well as a nuisance. Anon didn't bother to try and rise; knowing if he did he would just shove her out of the way. He nodded for Pfrann to collect the data padd for him. "Give me that -- You," he directed Kira, "get out of here now."

She turned from him for the console. Anon didn't care why. Pfrann had an idea. He tried it out, along with trying to hand Anon Kira's summary of the Federation reports. "Authority has been granted for a squad -- "

"We don't need a squad of anything," Anon took Kira's padd from him to fling it aside. "We're leaving. Give me the proposal. They want a conference, they have it. On Cardassia. I am not dying to make my point, neither are you or anyone." He meant Janice. He remembered Quark's up to the time he didn't remember anything; he was by far not the only victim of the terrorist assault. Hundreds of people were dead. Janice alive only because he took the Bajoran's knife to his stomach for her. 

Pfrann stared at the padd on the bed. He and Anon interrupted by Kira's identifying signal to the Tir, their Galor-glass battle cruiser. Anon's head snapped around to her. "What are you doing?"

Her reply was emotionless. "Issuing your order for the assignment of ten sentries."

His helmsman obediently appeared on the monitor screen. Anon blinked. "The conference is canceled!" He pushed himself to his feet enraged; towering above her, dwarfing her with his massive size, his hand raised and poised to push her away from the console.

She didn't flinch; calling his bluff. "You don't have the authority."

He almost told her how he was the representative and without him there was no conference. He almost asked her the pressing question if she truly was crazy? What were ten sentries against an army of Maquis other than suicide? He didn't bother. His hand pushed her aside. It didn't take much to move her. Her balance wasn't too good in those stupid boots she wore. He could see his mother jumping over tables. Somersaulting and cartwheeling her way through, past an onslaught of terrorists; he didn't think so. Kira caught her balance with the assistance of the console. Anon heard a voice call out his name in authority and warning. It wasn't Pfrann. It was familiar; from somewhere in the background on his bridge behind the startled expression of his helmsman on screen. It wasn't Tan. Pfrann heard and recognized the voice also. Nerys was too busy screaming something at him.

"Wait a minute," Anon instructed his helmsman, severing the link.

Kira flew into a rage, fighting to reconnect the signal; Anon slapping and pushing at her hands. Finally Pfrann surrendered to grabbing Kira from behind, holding her arms. By that time Odo was there, having wandered his way over following that confirming call to him from security, in time to hear the yelling and shouting that didn't particularly impress him. Kira sandwiched between the two of them didn't particularly surprise him. Pfrann's repetitive, somewhat earnest, calming request of his brother to take a breath and a step back from the shouting match before he lost his temper completely and snapped Kira in half possibly did. A little. The fact that it registered after the second or third time surprised Odo up to the point that Anon still fought to have the final say. That was standard. So was Kira's steadfast defiance and refusal to yield. In all, Odo felt they could resolve it on their own, waiting in the background to make sure. He didn't have to wait long. 

"Listen to me!" Anon's arm came towards Kira again, stopping to strike an imaginary line across the console. "This is it! All right? This is the line. Don't cross it. I don't find you entertaining like my father. Understand that? I don't!"

That was interesting. Deserved to an extent. Perhaps not the part about linking Kira with Dukat's legacy of trophies, just the overstepping of boundaries. Strange, but Odo had not considered Anon's impression of Kira might include a level of personal resentment in contrast to his brother's apparent level of personal acceptance. For whatever either was worth. A lot, on Pfrann's part. To the point of constituting usury, no doubt. Obviously worth little more than aggravation to Anon.

"Let her go," Anon directed Pfrann. He did.

"What did you say to me?" Kira wasn't finished yet. Hearing her name commingled with the masses was a bit much to take.

"Yes, well," Odo interceded before they had another Martok/Pfrann situation on their hands and a new debate over who was responsible for instigating whom.

"I told you before you are not my mother." Anon stooped to elevating Kira a step or two above the rank of ordinary mistress, in his opinion. He may as well have slapped her in the face, in hers.

"No she isn't," Odo agreed before Kira slapped Anon's. "Major would be more accurate. So before I'm obligated to start arresting people again…" And having to listen to it all over again…Kira walked out there, ending the fracas. That was satisfactory. "I'll be expecting your Task Leader." Odo left with that note of reminder.

That's what he thought. Nothing had changed. They were leaving. That was Anar's voice behind his helmsman. Dak'jar who tried to kill him, Janice and everyone else there in Quark's at the time. Anon pulled on his tunic. "I'm not angry with you." He meant Pfrann's incarceration and the reasons why.

"Did you kill Dak'jar?"

"No."

"Someone did."

"Coincidence probably." Anon resignaled his battle cruiser. "I don't think Janice realized who he was. It happened too quickly -- she left me a note. Hello. She was here, I was sleeping -- I don't know why she just didn't wake me up…" he glanced from his helmsman back on screen to the padd in Pfrann's hand; it was the Federation's analysis.

"There were two of them."

"I think I know that," Anon agreed impatiently. "I don't know who the other one was. A thin man. Small like a ferret. He was assigned to the corridor and with us at lunch. It wasn't Hawk. I would know Hawk -- so would you. His face might be his own, but his eyes and his attitude are Shakaar." That's what Anar had said once anyway. You couldn't escape Shakaar, anymore than you could escape Dukat.

"Did you kill him?" That was Pfrann's interest. Anon glanced again to the padd in his brother's hand. "Someone did. And half of Martok's bridge crew. Sisko's looking for who he thinks is Anar. It isn't. I think it's Hawk. Telling everyone he's Anar -- though they describe Anar, Anon. Read it," he attempted to force the padd into Anon's fist. "Sisko's reports describe Anar --"

"They can't," Anon insisted. "Describing Anar, they would describe Shakaar Adon. Anar would never be that stupid to let anyone get that close to him -- would he?" he demanded of his helmsman on screen. "I am your commander, not Kira Nerys."

"You are my commander," his helmsman assured.

"Just get Anar," Anon ordered impatiently. "He's there. I heard him." 

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

It was 0800 in the commissary aboard Anon's battle cruiser. The conference aboard the station between Sisko, Shakaar and the Federation, had ended an hour ago. Anar walked off the bridge in disgust when the communication link was severed. Tan let him go. He knew Bajorans; they like to think. An hour later he found him.

"What is your training?" Tan set one of two hot mugs down at Anar's elbow.

"Formally? Federation," Anar rubbed his tired eyes with a smile for the offering. "Other than that -- experience and learning. Cardassians, mostly."

Tan chuckled. "We make good teachers."

"Some of the best I've ever seen," Anar eased the steaming juice back to Tan. "No thank you, really. It's appreciated, but -- "

"It's coffee," Tan nodded. "Klingon. Raktajino. Go ahead, drink it. Don't ask. Just drink it."

"It's his father's ship," Anar supposed as the explanation. Knowing that he should refuse to eat or drink anything for principle alone.

Tan shrugged. "You think he would command a different one?"

"No," Anar picked up the mug, for some reason envisioning Dukat more with a bottle of wine in his hand. "Still doesn't explain the Klingon coffee."

"Don't ask," Tan reiterated.

He wasn't going to. "For four months I tried to talk Shakaar out of involving Janice. I would say it was all by accident. A coincidence." Except he knew it wasn't. The Prophets had their plan. It wasn't the stubbornness of Shakaar Adon of Bajor he was powerless against, it was them.

"And Shakaar," Anar handed the padd he had been working with to Tan. "I could go on every communication channel there is in the quadrant and destroy him in moments."

"Is that what this is?"

"No. That's detailed instructions in how to access the files at the UFP -- since they won't be conducting Sisko's counter-search for him."

"What about Bajor?" Tan asked as if he didn't know the answer.

Anar smiled. "I'll take care of infiltrating Shakaar's file. Have we heard from Anon?"

"Cardassia Prime. Five, ten minutes ago? I took it. It was nothing. Notifying us about the ten authorized sentries -- which we already knew. Better than what you hoped. Less than I wanted."

Anar stood up to exit in annoyance. "Have any of them even bothered to talk to Anon?"

"Soon we'll hear something," Tan followed, unperturbed by the slight. "It won't be Damar who signals us."

So it wouldn't be. Major Kira was on screen arguing with Anon when Anar entered the bridge. It wasn't Anon's naked chest that entranced him; he presumed they were in the Infirmary. It was Kira's insistent dictatorial address to the hesitant helmsman who she apparently knew from Dukat's days aboard some Klingon Bird-of-Prey. Anar thought of the coffee in his hand as he stepped to the communications console for a quick, authoritative call for Anon's attention before the argument turned physical, which it did with Anon's exasperated shove of Kira. Anon heard his name though, recognized the voice calling him, relieving the vexation of his bridge officer by severing the link. 

"What did she want?" Tan attacked the helmsman.

"For the Security Task Leader to report."

Tan snorted. He was the Task Leader and he would report when told to report. Not by Kira of Shakaar.

"Do you know her?" Anar wondered.

"No," Tan denied, though in service to his Emperor Dukat for the last quarter of a century, that included a year's turn of duty aboard the Bird-of-Prey. "Seen her, who hasn't? Know of her -- the same as all of them. Sisko. The Klingon -- why?" he looked Anar up and down sharply. "Do you know her?"

Anar smiled. "Never had the pleasure."

Tan snorted again. Pleasure was not what came to his mind. Defiant was the word to describe Anon when he reappeared on screen a few moments later; dressed and flexing his power rather than his bare muscles. There was temptation in his announcement that he was aborting the conference and leaving, especially since Anar agreed it was by far the simplest and best idea. For Janice. However, unless Anon was willing to abandon his career and adopt his father's renegade ways, it was not the best idea for him. Damar was the Emperor. Anar did not dispute Anon wielded power; he did. Simply somewhat less than his arrogant belief in his own omnipotence. A familiar affliction Anar could appreciate; he suffered from it himself. As he said, it was extraordinarily difficult not to encourage Anon's defiance. Anar was a loner, or he had been. A leader, he had been a leader of those who could take care of themselves. Until after the strong had died and only the weak survived, and suddenly he had thirty-five people solely reliant on him. He had their vulnerability on his mind as well as Janice's. The eminent danger to his tiny colony in the middle of nowhere if they focused on distractions like defying Damar, smearing Shakaar, instead of taking control where they needed to take control; that was in stopping his maniacal brother Hawk. 

"Leave for where, Anon?" he proposed common sense instead as the viable alternative to a life on the run.

"Cardassia Prime!" Anon's fist struck the console. That was his youth. By his father's age, even his father understood with certain actions came certain repercussions, such as exile. "What are you talking about, leave for where? Where do you think?"

Actually Anar was thinking how he would welcome Anon and his troop to his village, if that was what Anon wanted to do; he knew it wasn't. They had just come full circle back to common sense.

"I have been stabbed!" Anon brandished the Federation's analysis with its listing of dead and injured. "That idiot Bashir doesn't know what he's talking about, nor what he's doing. I never hurt like this when Janice took care of me; no one did. Ask them! I didn't hurt like this when the knife was still inside me. You don't find something wrong with the security arrangements of Sisko's? I do!"

They weren't Sisko's arrangements, they were Shakaar's, and there was a great deal wrong with them. "You look fine." Anar was being truthful, not callous. Trying hard not to laugh at the claim of Janice's divine healing powers; one that he remembered to be very different at the time. That was all right. He had his suspicions Anon was trying equally hard to skirt an issue difficult to avoid. Janice. The plausible root to his defiance; certainly his defensive posture. 

"No, I am not fine," Anon snapped. "Neither is Janice. They attacked her, not me. I was simply there. What do you think about that? Why is she even here? Why are you?"

He was either attempting to shed a feeling of guilt he felt, or he was telling the truth about the attack being directed against Janice. Anar did not appreciate the words either way. "Don't attempt to coerce me, Anon," he warned. "You know exactly why I am here."

"No, I don't," he insisted. "I know that was Dak'jar, that's what I know."

"And Assura," Anar agreed. "Hawk's deputy. Both silenced. One by Sian, one by me. Now, answer me. Is that true? Was their intent Janice?"

Anon waited. Digesting the confirmation of Hawk and his Maquis. Thinking about his own agenda and reasons for being there. The Cardassians were not going to go unchallenged. If it wasn't from the Maquis, it would have been someone else. "It's the way I saw it, yes. Janice was too frightened to see anything."

"Startled perhaps," Anar sighed, in part because he believed him. In part because if Anon's assumption was true, he knew Hawk's singling Janice out was a challenge to him.

"She was terrified!" Anon sputtered. "You put her in this situation, not me. You can't blame me -- or Central Command! You! That's who you blame. You!"

"Anon?" Anar suggested. "Would it help if I said I know about Janice and you?"

Anon shifted, bristling against the notice, not shrinking away. "Know, what do you know? Janice is my wife. Don't tell me not to be upset about my wife. Two hundred dead, 300 injured!" The padd struck the console. "Everything in here is wrong. Lies. From Martok, to Dak'jar, -- to the stupid analysis of my quarters. It was me. Damar. Pfrann. That's supposed to make me feel better Sisko thinks it was Bajorans? It doesn't!" 

"Then why are you refusing to install a security squad?"

"I'm not refusing!" Anon groaned. "I'm telling you it's not necessary. We're leaving. Me. Janice! Pfrann. Everyone. You, too!"

"We haven't left yet," Anar replied. "Nor any guarantee we'll live to try. I, or you, could sever Martok's head and hand it to him. I, or you, could rock the foundation of the Bajoran Provisional Government, destroying Shakaar with an image of my face before I ever opened my mouth. For what purpose? Hawk's threat remains very much alive on that station where you and Janice are. That's what I'm doing here. Janice isn't in the middle between you and I, don't try and put her there. She is between us and Hawk. If Hawk has backing beyond Winn, it's Gowron with a squad of Klingon battle cruisers waiting a thousand kilometers from Terok Nor to destroy us long before we reach the borders of Cardassian Space. Look at the whole picture, Anon. Defying Damar accomplishes one thing. Your alienation, not his. That isn't going to protect Janice or you -- Or Cardassia from some believed threat of Klingon invasion. Which is what Central Command and the Civilian Council is going to look at, and the only thing they will see. Call it what you want to. Resistance. Maquis. True Way. You may as well take off that uniform right now if you're going to pick up my discarded sword."

"Hm," Odo ogled the imposing Cardassian giant Tan an hour or so later from behind his resurrected desk in the middle of the open confines of the remnants of his office. For some reason the rank Sentinel seemed to be misplaced.

Vintage Dukat was on Dax's mind when she drifted in to introduce herself and apologize for Worf's absence. "Sentinel Tan? We've completed the analysis of Gul Dukat's quarters…Commander Worf's in the conference room with Captain Sisko and Legate Damar. I can show you the way."

"No. He can -- to the Infirmary," Tan read the report confirming Bajoran sabotage with a scowl. "My calculations place it on the Promenade."

"Calculations…" Dax glanced at Odo.

"Yes," Odo offered. "Sentinel Tan is not personally familiar with the station."

"With the Federation changes," Tan corrected, promoting the basic design of all the Cardassian mining stations of the era to be the same. He walked out to the Promenade to establish his position among what should be the workers quarters and wasn't. Any longer.

"Here I always thought we were unique," Dax grinned.

Odo grunted. "Yes, well, I always believed it was send us your best, not your biggest."

"It can't be both?"

"Suppose," Odo verified the results of his analysis that showed no security record of any Sentinel Tan either in the Federation or the Cardassian archives. 

"Should there be?"

"Palace guard," Odo decided. "Either that or a former nanny."

"I'll go along with that."

"There does seem to be an over abundance of them, doesn't there?" The choices of where to house his Legate and the Dukats however were beginning to become somewhat restricted. This would make the third change of quarters. Odo meandered out to the Sentinel puzzling over his whereabouts with the assistance of a schematic of the station's layout despite its similarities to all the others. "I don't suppose you'd want to be quartered in the same section as the Emperor -- and Dukat," he added as an intentional afterthought. 

"We would insist," Tan assured.

"Makes life a little easier," Odo chanced including his Legate in that assessment who they never went near. Their quest ended with securing Pfrann. Interestingly enough, removing Pfrann from the care of his brother wasn't to effect his continued protection, it was to obtain his approval of the proposed quarter change. So much for innocence, vulnerability and seventeen year olds. If this Tan was a Sentinel, he was their father's. Charged with insuring the rightful position of the youthful heirs alongside the latest of their father's greatest enemies; Damar. Odo supposed Tan's duties could be expanded to include their wellbeing even though as disinterested as he appeared to be in saying hello to his Emperor, he likewise held little interest in discussing the terrorist organization. Apparently what had happened was less consequential to this Cardassian than what was going to happen from here on. Odo could see himself agreeing with that. As long as the Sentinel Tan remained within the boundaries of his granted authority, Odo didn't mind agreeing with that.

"Make that both Sentinels," Odo muttered under his breath to Dax who had tagged along. Thinking about those Cardassian phaser rifles suddenly so readily available to the youngest of the Dukats who now knew of his brother's attack, and had as much information available to him as the Legate.

Dax wasn't so sure Odo wanted her input. It was plausible Tan was little more than a stooge. Dukat's way of securing details to the summaries issued to the representatives. The only other available access to the ponderous number of reports was through Damar, not likely to be cooperative. But did either of those possibilities really make the sharing of information wrong? The details were so dramatically removed from the fundamental findings, Tan or Dukat, or whoever was actually controlling the Cardassian security, greatly ran the risk of making some irretractable error if they weren't presented with all the facts rather than only the approved conclusions.

There was only one conclusion preying on Odo's mind. "None of the representatives are allowed to carry arms of any kind -- as soon as Major Kira resumes her diplomatic status, that regulation will apply to her," he preempted Pfrann's disclosure of Kira currently being armed to the teeth, to drive that point home to Tan. "As well as Captain Sisko and Chief O'Brien. Any questions that arise, I will be asking you."

Tan did have a question. He directed it to Dax in her position as Head of Bajoran Security. "Where are the quarter reassignments for the Bajoran representatives Doctor Lange and Major Kira? I don't see them listed here."

Dax recovered from her surprise. "I'm not quite sure I understand why you think you would."

"Then I'm not quite sure I understand why you seem to think you should have an interest in the security affairs of the Cardassian Union."

Touché, Dax declined to say as Tan and Pfrann walked away, leaving two of their sentries to post guard over Dukat's room. She smiled at them. "A general interest in the security of everyone? No," she shook her head at their dead-pan, silent faces. "You're right. Old habits die hard."

Yes, they certainly did. Odo emerged from the Infirmary to find Tan and his group waiting for them not twenty meters away. "Lost already?"

Not exactly. "What is this nonsense about some reputed leader?"

"Oh, him," Odo grunted. "Yes, well, apart from much of the evidence of his existence has been largely discounted -- "

"You can't identify this terrorist?" Tan accused Dax. "Not even his face? What he looked like?"

"Unfortunately, no," Dax admitted. "We haven't been able to locate anyone -- "

"Actually, we do have one potential witness who may be able to," Odo interrupted. "He's been interviewed and he's thinking about it. Claims a familiarity that he hasn't been able to place -- but he will. For now he's positive he saw the same man the evening before -- that would be Sunday. Shortly after Emperor Dukat -- sorry, Damar," he said, "arrived."

"Garak," Pfrann pronounced.

That same bell went off in Dax's mind. Reasonable, just wrong. "Quark," Odo identified wishing it had been Garak. Who was apologetic, a little too as usual, that he had been too preoccupied with assisting Doctor Lange to really notice too much of anything else. Odo believed him. Up to and including the excessive drooling for failing to notice what he should have noticed, if anyone noticed. He believed Quark also. Up to and including the excessive spitting over Odo's badgering for information.

"The Ferengi bartender," Pfrann noted for Tan.

__

That, Odo did not believe. The galaxy knew Quark. Of Quark and about Quark. "Owner," he clarified Quark's position. "You don't get out much, do you?"

He couldn't have known how right he was. How Tan was Dukat's Chief Engineer with an assignment extending far beyond that of merely securing information otherwise reserved for Damar. Data Tan did collect was for the purpose of comparison to that which they had already siphoned from the communications links to the assortment of ruling governments. This introduction of Garak and Quark were new. Not mentioned in the summary or the detailed analyses. The refuted evidence of a leader meant nothing. The unidentified Bajoran credited with killing the Klingons was Anar. The individual Sisko was associating with the name Anar was Hawk. There was as much confusion in the details of the Federation's reports as there was suggested by their summary.

Tan had no intention of setting the confusion straight. Hawk's malicious implicating hints, clearly disturbing, supported Anar's belief time was short between the time his brother struck and would strike again. They had to find Hawk and his men, ideally before the next strike. If not, Tan would settle for aborting it. Anar was doubtful about anything like a bomb. Claiming such covert activities were against his brother's flagrant nature. Tan wasn't so sure. The principal goal of the Bajoran terrorist in his mind was to glean attention. Tan's proclamation all Cardassian mining stations were similar in structure and design on a superficial level was true. His act of confusion was a ploy to obtain a schematic of the Federation's version of Terok Nor. To identify the extent of the facades cloaking the undeveloped and unknown areas that Sisko and his staff had learned to approach with extreme caution over the years, and that Tan knew were there. Many of them mined and armed from the simplest booby-trap to the most intricate and sophisticated computer weapons and defense programs. Those were what concerned Tan the most, next to locating the potential hiding places of the terrorist faction. His itinerary was full. Anon was a good engineer. Skilled and focused and lacking only Tan's years of experience. Priorities had both of them far too busy to have to think about Garak and Quark and the potential of Federation interference spreading to endanger Anar and his colony. Tan believed Quark's scattered and cluttered Ferengi brain could not immediately identify Anar as Shakaar Adon taken out of context. He did not believe for a moment that same principle applied to the tailor Garak.

"I want a report of those interviews," he demanded. "Central Command and the Civilian Council denounces the claim of the Bajoran leader as Klingon exaggerations -- supported by the Federation and Bajor. It states so right here."

"It's an open investigation," Odo replied. "Discounting the theory of leadership, it doesn't hurt to gather what facts we can about any of this group."

"Then give me your report of facts," Tan insisted. "If there is credence to additional information as it is collected, I will want to know. Correct?"

"It's a reasonable request," Dax mentioned as the Cardassians moved off.

Odo grunted. It was reasonable until they had a line of middle-aged Bajorans stretched out in the morgue.

"Well…" There was only one thing Dax could say as far as that. "If we do, we know where to look first."

True. With a little luck they would find one unidentifiable guilty one among the row of identifiable innocent. 

By mid-afternoon Anon was impatient and disgruntled with being the invalid. Effecting a clean link with the Tir somewhere in the middle of his priorities he begrudgingly accepted Tan's notice of a few hours necessary for reestablishing their control over the station's security network and the resulting improvement in transporter ability. That was several hours ago. Bashir returned to the Infirmary around 1500 in time to find him leaving.

"I think I know if I'm well enough to resume my command," Anon interrupted Bashir's liberal medical protest with a turn on his heel for the door.

"Oh," Bashir said. "Well, yes, I'm quite sure you do believe you are. However, I'm also quite serious when I say how you feel, and what you think does have a direct influence on your well-being -- as does your age." He followed Anon to the doorway where the Gul paused to look past his sentries to the Federation squad straightening to attention in their line down the corridor. "Which is young? The strength and foolishness of youth? Simply a matter of how best to convey that to you tactfully. I'm not exactly old myself. So, yes, I can assure you, I do understand your frustration with being confined even if I don't agree with you. In this instance I do know better -- than you?" he smiled.

The Gul sighed, resigned to having to debate what wasn't a debate. He was stubborn, quite unrealistically so, and clearly uncooperative. Bashir was as stubborn; wrestle with Anon was another story. He was not going to wrestle Anon, anymore than he was going to allow Federation, Bajoran, and anyone else's security to wrestle with him. Anon Dukat had a strip of synthetic grafting protecting the repair of his traumatized artery whether he cared to admit it or not. That was his status, and his status was not scheduled to change for several hours.

"Doctor?" Anon proposed. "I am going to say something to you that I have sworn I would never say to anyone…Do you really think they call me my father's son for no reason?"

Hardly what Bashir expected him to say, he'd grant him that. "I don't suppose the reason would be your father and mother were mates and you are a result of that union?"

"No," Anon shook his head. "That's not the reason."

Bashir didn't think so. "Well," he took a deep breath. "So we're at a standoff. Where do we go from here? Any ideas?"

Anon glanced over his shoulder towards security, thinking of Janice and not confident with anyone's ability to protect her other than himself. "If I rest in my quarters…"

"Definitely," Bashir approved.

"Sauna," Anon decided. "If I do anything, that's what I'll do."

"For health reasons?" Bashir verified. Anon looked at him; he nodded again. "I would be inclined to agree with that as well. I'll obtain permission from Captain Sisko. Quark's remains closed to the public. I can't see where there should be a problem; certainly private and secure enough."

"That's what I was thinking," Anon assured. Ten minutes later he was in Quark's attempting to convince him of the same thing.

"Uh, huh," Quark was listening. "So let me see if I have this straight…we're under siege and the only thing you can think of doing is soaking in a tub of hot fish oil."

"You say that as if I were planning something criminal! I have permission from Sisko -- Bashir! Do you really think I would be standing here if I didn't?"

He couldn't be serious. "Do you really want me to answer that?"

"No! What _I want_ is holosuite four at 1900!"

"What's the matter with number three at 21?" 

The Ferengi was as irritating as his father's Bajorans. What did he care really about where or which suite? "I'll take them all."

"All?" Quark's jaw slackened. "What are you? Made out of latinum? I'm looking at having to make up two days receipts -- that's if I'm lucky and the doors will be here to reopen tomorrow. I just can't hand over the holosuites. I don't care who you are."

"I want them all!" Anon loomed dangerously over the freshly polished bar. His words and breath almost as intimidating as his chest. 

"Strike that," Quark agreed, no fool, "they're yours. Which ones do you want on the record, and which one do you want off?"

That generated a strained look. It was all right. Quark had an idea it was probably best not to press for details. "All. All of them on the record, all Cardassian saunas -- that's a lot of health, but who am I? If anyone asks -- which I'm not planning on happening, I don't know about you -- we'll blame it on your genes. Where were we? Any preference for the program? Don't be shy, I ask all my customers the same question…maybe I should explain why," he nodded to the frown. "You say sauna, I say which one? You say come again, I say let me try it this way. I've got a Library of Cardassian sauna programs. One is for health. Your sister's. Two, and need I say the more popular, you supply the girl. Three, the program supplies her. Four, it gets better from there. Five, I'm starting to lose you…look, just tell me what you want. Trust me. Your secret's safe with me."

"Health," Anon sputtered, confused Quark might add until he turned surly. "I said health. I've been stabbed! I need to relax!"

"Definitely safe with me," Quark promised. "If I wasn't there to see it with my own eyes, I might even believe you."

"I don't care what you believe. I want a Cardassian sauna at 1900 like it says in Bashir's recommendations. You have questions, talk to him, not me."

"On the other hand…" Quark examined Garak when Anon left with his two sentries. "There's no saying you couldn't be lying, and I couldn't have been hallucinating. Maybe we just thought he kissed her. Maybe it just looked like he did. Maybe he just tripped and fell and her face got stuck on his…I don't know. I do know installing a Cardassian Intelligence network on the planet surface, I buy. Attitude, he has. In the meantime, this guy's a lover like his father's his mother. She has to be a spy. Read my lips, she's a spy. No one would date the guy. Repeat. No one. She would date you first. You would date me. There's no reason to get carried away." 

"Oh, I've no doubt Julian did make the recommendation," Garak cooed, cleverly having decided it was advantageous to protest Doctor Lange's innocence and allow Quark to intimidate himself with his own conclusions. "However, I wouldn't be so quick to discount Gul Dukat's shrewd manipulation of the opportunity. He and Doctor Lange will be rendezvousing in the holosuites." 

"Uh, huh. So what you're saying is you're right and I'm wrong. Great. Just what I need. Another dead body lying around. Like I haven't had enough of them."

"Body?" Garak repeated, apparently not having thought of the repercussions to spending the night in a sauna. Why should he? He was Cardassian. To him hot was cold. Need Quark have to point out what it was to everyone else?

"Death," Quark assured. "She's Human. How long do you think she's going to last?"

"You have a point," Garak agreed.

"That much I know. I'm waiting for ideas."

__

"'Warning…'" Leeta read from Quark's carefully prepared script. _"'You are approaching the maximum length of exposure recommended for beings comprised of 65% percent water…and other living things'…_What is this?" she squeaked, finding something more than odd with more than Quark's sense of public health and awareness. 

"Just read," Quark insisted. "It's a public service announcement. What do you think it is?"

"Uh, huh. Since when have you become so publicly aware?"

"Better question. What do you think the chances are of surviving eight hours in a Cardassian sauna?"

"Don't be stupid," she sneered. "Who would want to spend eight hours in a Cardassian sauna?"

"A Cardassian. Now read. Skip to the part…_for an additional modest fee we have carefully prepared a preview of select holo programs available for your continued pleasure…_et cetera, et cetera -- what do you think?"

"I…" Garak said at a loss otherwise.

"A picture paints a thousand words." Quark was satisfied.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Tan had penetrated the UFP security files when Anon arrived in his quarters. He watched the data begin to scroll across the monitor screen of the console. Estimated time of completion; eighteen hours. That was contradictory to Anar's insistence impatience completed his brother's profile of violence. To pursue wasn't helpful, it was a waste of time, increasing the danger of sparking retaliation. Anon could not shake his wanting to just leave. The crucial need to locate Hawk was necessary only because they were refusing. If Anar was uncertain as to the weight a threat would carry aimed directly at Shakaar without the supporting evidence he was attempting to gather, Anon knew of a certain way to cancel the conference now without risking complicated repercussions for any of them. Janice. However much her refusal to continue to participate would alienate her from the Federation or Bajor was irrelevant. The only place she was going from there was to Cardassia Prime with him as his wife.

"She's in the morgue," Pfrann was complaining behind him, anticipating he might order Tan to concentrate on finding Janice. "Safe. That's what they have her doing; helping them. You can't see her or talk to her now. Let him continue. We need the information."

He said safe. Anon did not want her involved. Helping anyone, knowing any of this. Dak'jar, anything. It was not going to do anything except terrorize her.

Pfrann was reading his mind. "We've replaced the medical file. If she runs the compilation it won't be Dak'jar."

No, someone, anyone. Why did he think that changed anything?

"Garak knows of Anar. The Ferengi Quark. There is nothing to stop either of them from informing the Federation. You forget Hawk already baits Sisko with Anar --"

"I don't forget anything," Anon interrupted. "Garak and Quark know of Janice -- "

"So does Leeta," Pfrann assured. "The Ferengi Rom. The alien Morn -- "

"There is everything to stop them!" Anon stopped him harshly. "Confusion," he clarified before there were five more dead identifiable bodies in the morgue, none of them with white hair. "Quark can't sell what he doesn't understand."

Pfrann glanced at Tan. "And Garak?"

Couldn't sell what he didn't understand. The time they claimed not to have on their side Anon maintained they had if they left now; unable to grasp the magnitude of Anar's belief they were prisoners of an unseen captor with little chance of making it through the airlock alive.

He couldn't grasp it because he was Cardassian the same as Tan who was unable to relinquish the idea of a bomb capable of being discovered and disarmed. That was not to their detriment as much as it heightened Anar's awareness that he was going through the motions of a defense that meant little unless it was part of the Prophets' plan. He prayed that it was, knowing the prayers eased his fears of an inability to do nothing except watch. The mastery he cultivated and honed in Hawk was his own. He was chasing himself. His skills without the conscience. The evidence he raced to gather to force Shakaar into listening where he had refused to listen for four months was glaring in its value as a defense of his own position. Laying the blame at the feet of where it belonged; Shakaar. Fully aware of Hawk's Threat Force and believing it to be Anar's. But what was the necessity of a defense unless some act first preceded it? Presuming it to be Quark's was foolish. Eighteen hours to complete the UFP link to locate data that may not even be there guaranteed a second strike by Hawk long before that time. If Shakaar still refused to cancel there would be a third. The situation was rapidly becoming a contest between trying to circumvent Hawk, and attempting to read between the lines of the piece of the Prophets' puzzle Anar held, to determine what should be his next and correct moves beyond the temptation of embracing his past and declaring open warfare against his brother. 

A contest of wills to be held where? The center of the Promenade? Anar was never so aware of his phaser rifle propped against the base of the console. Almost mocking in its intimation that he was going nowhere except in circles as he sat there at the helm of the Tir downloading the secrets of the Bajoran security files to Tan aboard the station. For all the comforting assistance afforded him by the Prophets in his escape from Sisko, he was not confident Janice would not be revealed to be expendable in their determination to protect the future from its dangerous past. That was not a prospect he enjoyed thinking of; certainly not a choice he came there willing to make. It was a matter of faith. Faith, the information the Prophets chose not to reveal to him was irrelevant to his role.

"Of guardian, Anar, not Maquis," he told himself sternly, much to the questionable appreciation of Anon's helmsman and the relief clearly flickering across the face of the child Ziyal continuing to watch him closely from behind the readout display. "Leave the phaser rifle alone. If Sisko can know when to pick up arms and when not to, so can and will you."

"He seeks your head as you speak," the Cardassian retorted.

Oh, yes. Just a subtle way of the Prophets conveying he served best staying put. 

"Anon…" It was 1700 when Janice returned to her quarters with a smile for the Federation Deputy Task Leader sitting and reading inside her cabin, to round the corner into her sleeping area and have Anon appear on her screen monitor moments later. "What are you doing?" her excited whisper held more concern for his health than potential discovery. "You're supposed to be in the Infirmary…" 

"I must see you," his eyes glistened anxiously back into hers. "Your grotto's too far. I thought of my Cardassian sauna. I'll send for you."

"Oh, you will," she teased.

He remained anxious. "A couple of hours? Tell them you're tired and want to sleep -- can you do that?"

Janice couldn't see why not. The security officer was only there to insure the sanctity of her quarters until she arrived. That's what the woman said anyway when Janice walked back into her living area. Pleasantly presuming Kira was the one who had hailed to make sure Janice had been notified the conference schedule had changed and would resume at 1000 the following morning, the deputy handed Janice the padd she had been reviewing of their itinerary and left to assume her post outside. 

"No, I was just thinking of going to bed…" Janice finished her unnecessary explanation with a shrug for the door closing between them. That was easy. Any concerns or worries went out of her head other than in scolding Anon for having left the Infirmary prematurely.

Anon posed defensively against Pfrann's chastising. This arbitrary transporting back and forth had long passed flagrant and was going to be their undoing. Considering the intricate maneuvers Tan was currently involved in to circumvent the station and the UFP's security systems? It was definitely too much to ask; the odds of discovery were rapidly piling against them.

"I can't talk to Janice here…how can I talk to her here?" Anon insisted. With him, Tan, and everyone else there? It wasn't private. If it could be made private, it was still intimidating with the security surrounding them and Damar two doors away.

What was he talking about? It would be the same thing on the ship. It would be the same thing at home. Sentries, Tan, Damar…"Anon…" Pfrann said testily.

"No," Anon refused, fearful of frightening Janice particularly because he knew what he was planning to do was much closer to telling her what to do rather than talking about anything. Ordering her, if necessary, they were going to leave today, tonight, tomorrow morning at the latest. He didn't know how she was going to react other than to dismiss what he was saying like she always did on the planet whenever he attempted to explain logic to her. Easygoing and relaxed, Janice was as stubborn as he, and he was worried enough about clashing with her than to have to think about anything else. The holosuites were secure. Pfrann was monitoring. Tan, Sisko, security, Anar, everyone. He had permission, and he wouldn't have permission if it wasn't secure.

"We're going to get caught!" Pfrann sputtered.

No, they were not. Even though Anon had an idea he wanted to be found out. Not being able to protect Janice openly was as aggravating as the prospect of putting her on display. _That_ was what his father would do, not what he was going to do. _He_ was going to see his wife to talk to her. The galaxy would know everything anyway when she resigned her position to return with him to Cardassia -- making it through the airlock alive.

"Alive, Pfrann, alive," Anon stressed. "They have to guarantee Janice diplomatic immunity as my wife; they have to do that! Sisko, Shakaar, all of them. They can't do anything about it other than protect her. That's what they have to, and will do! Tell him!" he ordered Tan.

Tan snorted, trusting the Federation and Shakaar as much as they trusted him. Unconcerned about his ability to protect or to prevent detection, he probably agreed the unnecessary risk was foolish as he knew Anon could not be talked out of it. The Cardassian ego would never allow it even if his lineage wasn't drawn from Dukat. Anon's weighty rank of commander settled the matter. Four sentries accompanied Anon to the holosuites, verified the program was operating correctly and signaled Tan who transported Janice without incident at approximately 2100. It never occurring to any of them of the everyone monitoring for anomalous activity one of them might also be Hawk.

The eyes of Hawk regarded the Bajoran security officer from Dukat's bedside. The man's ardent loyalty to Shakaar found him foregoing discreet inquiries among the ranking Special Forces to conducting his own investigation; one that eventually brought him to the old ore bays and not long afterwards into the arms of Hawk's forces.

"I know this station," the Bajoran explained his miraculous abilities while Hawk stooped in his arrogance to thank the Prophets for their assistance. "I spent ten years here, in these ore bays, throughout Prefect Dukat's reign."

"And should my understanding include sympathy?" Hawk wondered. "Or outrage over your failure to do anything about your situation other than whine?"

The Bajoran looked over the three Maquis agents at their youthful leader's side. "My loyalty is to Shakaar, the same as yours. I disagree with your methods, and respect your anger. We have been betrayed. The people's representative is the concubine of the Cardassian Dukat."

"You find that startling," Hawk replied.

The Bajoran took a step forward, attempting to place the face he had never seen before in his life. The jutting cheekbones under their tightly stretched flesh… "Cardassian…" He stiffened.

"Not even close," Hawk smiled, his lips thin, his teeth like square, white blocks. "Though I have been told by a few experts that I would be a perfect candidate for surgical reconstruction -- if it wasn't for my delicate size."

"I still know you," the Bajoran insisted.

"Hardly," Hawk assured. "My brother, if you knew me you would never have come here, certainly not alone."

There was a Cardassian at the Bajoran's side. If no one else saw her, the officer did. A woman, young, saying something about taking her hand. "What are you doing here?" he questioned her when the light faded and they were left alone just to sit and talk.

"Attempting to understand my father?" Ziyal extended chagrined. "It's no easy task."

Hawk scattered the ashes of the Bajoran's remains with his foot.

"Transporter carrier wave," one of his agents reported a minor ripple in his readings indicative of Dominion technology. "It's the Tir."

Hawk's laugh was short and empty; his footsteps echoing along the steel floor of the ore room. "You have to be kidding me."

"See for yourself."

Of course he wasn't kidding. Hawk's head hung. He should be offended by the affront to his power; he was livid. Vain or impatient, he required no less than immediate acquiescence to his demands. Instead the day had come and gone with the conference rescheduled, not canceled. His demonstration of strong Bajoran objection to the congress had fallen on deaf ears. The mode and method of anyone else's responses were irrelevant. Shakaar and Bajor were supposed to surrender. Failing to do so, his sights refocused on Lange. The malicious last minute inclusion of her as a specified target the evening before, bungled by Assura and his brother's sergeant Dak'jar, loomed today as the potential tool to break Shakaar's resistance to being held hostage by his uncle's will.

"Do you want to know where?" the agent asked.

"Well, let me see…" Hawk's stare was cold. "Maybe I can guess?"

"The holosuites."

"The holosuites," Hawk repeated. Perhaps it was him. Simply failing to understand the correlation between wining and dining and war. His nephew's arrogance was equaled only by Dukat's.

"He is Dukat," his agent reminded.

Then Hawk guessed there was only one thing to do. Remind Dukat he was Shakaar. "Maybe they'll get it right this time," he hinted, having an idea they would.

Janice transported into the steaming crater of a volcano. That's how hot it looked it should feel through the smoky darkness wet with heavy clouds of some stench illuminated by heated rocks glowing red in their molten pools of amber sludge. Anon waited proud and anticipatory beside a large, stone bath of a slimy liquid that he had ready to cool her off if necessary. She tried to be nonchalant and keep her nose from wrinkling at the overwhelming nauseating smell. "So this is a Cardassian sauna…" 

"Yes, this is it…what do you think?"

He was so eager. She couldn't help her wince. "Think?"

Anon's mood deflated. "You don't like it."

No, she liked it. It wasn't that at all. "What's that smell?"

He was defensive immediately; waving his arm and ordering the program to end. "Fish oil, yes, fish oil -- forget about it. The smell, everything."

"Anon…" Janice sighed as the sauna vanished and they were left standing in the barren reality of the holosuite. 

"I said, forget about it!" he stalked back and forth across the cold, lifeless floor. "You don't like it, fine. You don't like anything I do. What else is new? Nothing I do is right. I can't stand that about you. Don't tell me what to do!"

Janice supposed he did look a little like a frustrated, angry bull. She couldn't see the reference to an amphibian in him really, anymore than she understood why he was so upset. "Anon…" she tried.

"I am Cardassian!" he charged, "not you!" That was it that explained it all. To control was synonymous with his species and he had absolutely no control over her, not since the day he met her. Questions and more questions about why he thought or did anything he did at all. Questions that he tried to answer with about as much success and penetration as he would have talking to a wall. It made him crazy. Unless he was willing to dictate to her, rip her childlike illusions to shreds he could never hope to help her to see or understand anything. Least of all about Klingons, Hawk, or anyone else whose intentions weren't as honorable and pure as hers, including his own.

His stomach wrenched. It wasn't his wound, it was his guilt. All the nonsense about a consulate and Ziyal and accepting the Bajoran-Cardassian orphans. He didn't accept them; he hated them. Them and her; Ziyal. More because Ziyal was his sister; she wasn't his sister. She was his father's daughter, that was all. He was his father's son. A Gul. _The_ Gul. Dukat of the Second Order, Central Command. With a mission and full intentions of preserving and restoring the Union to its rightful and former place within the galaxy. Supreme.

"Janice, I can't lie to you," he begged her. "Don't ask me to try. I am Anon. A warrior like Martok, Sisko, Shakaar, all of them! I can't change that. Not for you, or anyone. My father couldn't, and I can't. Nerys, Naprem, Janice, it doesn't matter. You are you, and we are…I am…" he took a breath, "Dukat." 

"Okay…" Janice said slowly. "I still like your sauna…" Which she did. She just wondered about the ghastly smell that she probably shouldn't have said anything about. "I mean, it's not like I've never smelled anything dead or rotting before. I have. Just not fish…Cardassian fish. Human, I have. Bajoran…"

Anon groaned. "Never mind about the sauna!"

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure!" he was in her face, exasperated and waiting for something; she didn't know what. His hand was soft and gentle cradling her chin, his voice remaining desperate. "I could crush your face like a piece of glass."

"Do you want to?" 

"No, of course I don't want to. I simply know I can. And how many others can. I don't want you to get hurt. I love you."

"Good," Janice smiled. "Because I love you. Can't we just resume the program?"

No. It was a stupid idea. Window dressing behind which to hide and he wasn't hiding, not from her. "Janice, you have to learn to listen to me. When I tell you something, when I don't. _Yes, _Anon. That's it. Nothing else!"

She studied him. "Are you lying to me?"

"About what?" he insisted. "I want you to resign from the conference. I've told you that."

"Oh," her fingers picked at his tunic. "Well, actually, I was talking more about us. Pretty silly, huh?"

Them? He didn't know what she meant. "No, of course I'm not lying to you about us." 

"And actually," she smiled, "you told me to wait to talk to Shakaar until after you had heard from your Council. Have you?"

She was hopeless. "Janice, I have been attacked. It could have been you! Why can't you even try to understand that?"

She supposed she could if she wanted to, which she didn't. Probably because she did understand more than she wanted to. "Oh, Anon," her fingers entwined through his cradling her cheek, "isn't this so much better than shooting phasers at one another?"

Anon stared, feeling her soft, wet kiss against the palm of his hand, along his fingertips. He swallowed hard. "Resume…resume program."

Thirty minutes later they were interrupted by Leeta's commercial warning of the dangers of overexposure as they bathed in a pool of tepid fish oil.

"What's she saying?" Anon insisted in perplexed annoyance with the sudden, blaring announcement. "Who is that?"

"Leeta, I think," Janice laughed. "I'm not sure. Something about finding a new and suitable program guaranteed to delight?"

"I've no doubt we will." An equally amused voice behind them commented. Anon whipped around to a Bajoran Special Forces officer staring down on them with vacant eyes in a too large skull. He did not know him; recognizing him only as the Security Task Leader assigned to their corridor the evening before. There were three others with him. Two with phaser rifles like him, the third with a video camera.

"No, Anon, don't!" Janice stopped him from attacking before he hurt himself.

Hawk was not threatened, boldly moving up to crouch down at the edge of the pool.

"You have me," Anon breathed deeply. "Let her go."

There was genuine surprise in the Bajoran's laugh. "What makes you think we're interested in you?"

What? Anon frowned from him to the three others, settling on the camera.

"Look upon it as an insurance policy," Hawk offered.

Odo's cold disgust with the whole business was not surprising to Dax. Benjamin shared his viewpoint. So did she. Kira. The Chief. Julian, she knew was completely taken aback by the UFP's response and probably didn't know what to think. Worf, she still hadn't had a chance to ask anything and wouldn't until they finally settled in their quarters around midnight. He was still hesitant with expressing himself even with her. Less certain if it was the Klingon in him that delayed his acting than it was the unexpected Klingon in Pfrann.

__

Who carried his fight all the way through to absolute victory, as any Klingon would. Dax nodded in understanding Worf had been simply unprepared. Scattered, fleeting thoughts strayed to briefly wondering more about Worf's mention of Pfrann and a hand phaser. Where could he have gotten one? From someone who had dropped one? Rifles were the standard issue for all the security details right now. Special Forces and the station's. Had Lange carried the phaser Kira had given her, contrary to Dax's presumption she wouldn't? Losing it in the confusion?

Aside from Dax still believed it was against Lange's nature, the nightgown Janice had worn to Quark's left little room to conceal a weapon. It had to be coincidence to Pfrann finding himself armed minutes later. Was Garak possibly the inadvertent supplier instead? Quark, an intentional one? Either of them at some point earlier than dinner time? She thought about the readings taken from Dukat's quarters. Residuals of phaser discharge and a security officer dead from a hand phaser pressed to the back of his neck. Had something else happened in those quarters she and the Chief overlooked? Damar or Dukat having taken care of matters themselves? Were the Legate and his representatives really as oblivious to their surroundings as they appeared to be?

Dax suddenly felt almost consoled by the annoying addition of the Cardassian Task Force. It narrowed the field considerably as far as who to look to for answers should any new questions arise concerning the Cardassian delegates directly. There was something odd about Dukat she just couldn't put her finger on. Pfrann also. Their youth possibly? In the Chief's words they were sitting around a table with little more than a group of surly brats knowing more and telling the adults what to do. The sarcastic and disdainful Gul had nerve even if he didn't have his father's affected postures with his proposal of mutual acceptance. She highly doubted if the elder Dukat would have the audacity.

"Yes, he would," Dax decided. Maybe not his son's ability to keep a straight face, but he would definitely have the gall to submit such an outlandish claim of heartfelt brotherhood with the Bajoran state, fully expecting it and him to be taken seriously.

"I'm missing something. What am I missing?" she drifted off to sleep thinking of the sentinel Tan who on one hand verbally supported unity among the Security Task Forces, and on the other set his squad apart. Unfortunately too far apart from the others to prevent Hawk from striking again while she and Worf slept. 

"Are you too warm?" Anon asked Janice waiting quietly for him to finish pulling on his boots. She looked nervous, uncertain. He had never seen her look that way before. 

"No, I'm fine." The smile she managed was weak, the light in her eyes faded and dull. 

Anon sighed. It was difficult to be gentle with hate and anger boiling inside of him. He wanted to kill, not comfort anyone. His hand stroked her arm slowly; his voice soft and close to pleading. "I want us to be together right."

"We're not together right?"

"No, I think we are."

"Good." Her smile was stronger. "So do I. I really don't think they'll use the pictures, Anon. It's just a threat -- I do understand threats and the reasons why. But it just goes to show why we have to continue, not quit. They're afraid, Anon. They're only afraid. They're not evil or cruel, anymore than you or I. A lot of people are afraid of change."

Somehow his voice stayed quiet. "Yes, they will use them. You heard him. "

"Hawk," she nodded. "Yes, that was Hawk."

Her knowledge of Hawk was just another example of the contradictions surrounding her. "Janice, how could you know so much about Hawk and not understand what all of this means?"

She shrugged. "I'm not so sure what all there is to understand."

"He's Maquis! I can't believe we're alive!"

"Because he's Anar's brother," her hand patted his chest in reassurance. "He won't use the pictures, Anon, you'll see -- who will even care if he tries to?"

"Everyone!" he insisted. "The Bajoran and the Cardassian representatives? _Everyone!_ Not about me, about you! Dukat? Ha! What else is news? That's not news. _You_ are news!"

"Collusion," she grinned. "See? I really do understand. And is that really so wrong? I mean…" she kissed his cheek lightly, "you are the Cardassian representative. I am the Bajoran…"

"Stop that," he requested.

She laughed. "Anon, how can you have unity without collusion?"

He didn't know. He knew they, the galaxy cared. Would care and did care. It was ridiculous to even be arguing about it when he wanted her to quit, never mind some Bajoran Maquis terrorist calling himself Hawk. "The conference is over. Sisko can come to Cardassia with Shakaar. Terok Nor, they can keep. All of them. Whoever wants it; I don't!"

"We'll talk to Anar," she proposed. "I'm sure he can convince Hawk to agree to a cease fire long enough to at least listen to what we're all trying to accomplish."

"Anar?" Anon felt his stomach churn with new guilt, hearing himself brag to Anar how no one but he could protect her adequately. Hearing about this? His failure and Janice's embarrassment? It wouldn't be a wise Bajoran Town Elder who emerged from the sanctuary of his battle cruiser in the mood to talk to anyone. "No, we can't talk to Anar -- Sisko is looking for him!" he insisted to her puzzled look. "He thinks he is responsible for all of this. Quark's! Everything!"

That penetrated, and, no, Janice did not understand a word of what he was talking about. "Responsible? But that's ridiculous. Anar is the kindest, most gentle man I know."

"I know that!"

"Anar's only here to help. I realize we don't know where he is, but that's not because he ran away from anything -- "

"No, he didn't run away." Anon hugged her shoulders. "He's on the Tir helping Tan to find Hawk and his Maquis…"

"Maybe we should talk to Kira," Janice considered all of their options.

"What?" Anon straightened up.

"Anon," she submitted gently, "I respect that it's difficult for you to view Kira as an ally."

"Difficult?" he choked. "She is responsible for everything that has ever happened to my father; her, not him! Picking and prodding and poking at him for years. That is why he is insane. Interned in a Federation asylum for the rest of his life!"

"I don't know anything about that. I am sure once Kira understands she will gladly be a liaison between Anar and Captain Sisko. We'll talk to her right after tomorrow's session."

"No!"

"Well, it's either Kira or we have to talk to Captain Sisko ourselves," she tapped her foot in firm and committed reminder. "Someone has to do something. This can't continue, Anon."

"Leave!" he assured. "Sisko is Federation! I am Cardassian, Anar is Maquis. He is not going to listen to us or Anar or anyone. Two hundred people are dead, Janice. They are not going to blame Shakaar, Winn or Gowron. They are going to arrest you and Anar, and I am going to be sent back to Cardassia. That is the only thing that is going to happen. Ask my father! I'm telling you it's happened to him!"

"All right then we will ask him."

"Excuse me?" he stared at her.

"What he would do?" she offered. "If you were your father right now who would he talk to? Would it be Kira or Captain Sisko?"

"Kira!" he damned, finally. "Yes! He's trusted her and she has betrayed him countless times. What I have been saying to you!"

"That you resent her intrusions," Janice nodded. "Which you have every right to your feelings. But right now we need her help, Anon. We can't let the Federation arrest Anar simply because he's Maquis. He's innocent. Kira will never let that happen. I know that and I believe you know it also."

He knew a lot of things. One was that Anar was right. There was no way out, nor would there be. Not without a fight. "I want to kill them, Janice," he explained without apology. "If I kill them then everything will be all right."

"Six phaser rifles against a squad of Klingons?" she smiled.

"Yes," he nodded. "Exactly."

"Well," she kissed him again, "it wasn't practical for the colony and it isn't practical now."

Perhaps not. But it would definitely make him feel better. He took her hand, activating his communicator. "Come on. We can't stay here -- what?" he said when her cheeks flushed suddenly warm and pink. "What's the matter?" 

"I was hoping we could go to mine?" she hinted. "Nothing against Pfrann or Tan or anyone else."

"Where it's private and not too hot," Anon's finger traced the perspiration on her forehead, cheeks and nose. "What are you going to do on Cardassia Prime? Where it's hot and dusty and the air glows yellow from dawn to dusk?"

"Perspire at lot?" she guessed.

"We're going to mine," Anon decided. "You are my wife. A man lives with his wife, in the same quarters as his wife. It would be the same aboard the Tir, at home on Cardassia. I'm not parading you, or hiding you. Are you ashamed of me?"

"No, of course I'm not ashamed of you -- Anon!" she slapped at him lovingly. "What a silly thing to say!"

"Just Human," his fingers pulled on her hair as he kissed her and they faded away to kiss, sleep and debate her surrendering her career, her mummy Delores and the survival of the colony to the sole protection and leadership of Anar and coming to live permanently on Cardassia Prime, just not occasionally as a visitor to her husband's home world; which she refused to do until Anar and his township was established as a recognized member of the Bajoran world. 

"And," Janice's finger drilled into his chest. "the colony's safe from UFP and Cardassian sanctions just because they happen to be former Maquis. For goodness sake, Anon, Nadya is nine years old. Is the Federation and Cardassian councils going to order her arrest too? They are not. They're not ordering the arrest of anyone."

Anon moaned. "I said I would speak with the Council -- I said I would protect them from the UFP, Shakaar, Klingons, anyone. Offer them Cardassian citizenship if no one else wants them -- move them from their colony and reestablish them on one of ours -- Janice! You're coming with me to Cardassia. That is final."

"You're so sweet," Janice kissed him. "Though I really don't think Anar wants to move. I'm sure he wants to stay there; I know he does. There's no reason why he can't."

The age old argument. The reason the Maquis so quickly gained popularity and strength in the first place. No, Anon wasn't sweet. He was sullen. Sullen when he fell asleep. Sullen when he woke up, and sullen throughout the conference too busy and bothered by their own dark clouds to notice his.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The bar portion of Quark's reopened to limited and restricted public seating at 1700. Bashir wandered in with Garak shortly after for a relaxing apéritif before the more formal dinner not scheduled for several hours yet, and slated to be held in the semi-private confines of the main conference room rather than at Quark's. Yet to officially revoke his order of mandatory "togetherness", Sisko did cast aside a decent portion of the rule book forbidding fraternization with opposing sides of the political triangle, broadening the roles of Dax and Worf to acting Deputy Commanders of Security to Odo's Constable irrespective of whose side. This not only allowed his senior staff a limited, though valuable opportunity to compare notes with each other and their subordinates currently absorbing most of the monumental task of the continuing investigation into the terrorist attack, it insured his staff maintained their status as Commanders over the Special Forces and the station's security force. At the moment Kira and Worf were apparently off elsewhere while Dax sat in Quark's with the Chief comparing notes with a respectable selection of Shakaar's finest lingering in the near background.

"That's three," Quark beat Bashir to the table, plunking a cold glass of ale down in front of O'Brien. "Not that I'm keeping tabs."

"Just a record of the tab," Bashir chuckled. "Three? Already? Really. Rather a worthless day all 'round, I take it."

"No, it wasn't worthless," O'Brien drained close to half his glass before setting it back down. "It was hot. And I'm tired enough without having to_ peer_ through the _gloom _to read when I can't see but two feet in front of my face to begin with."

"Hot, thirsty, tired and cranky," Bashir grinned at Quark. "I'd like a menu please."

"A menu," Quark apprised Dax. "He wants a menu."

"Yes," Dax smiled.

Quark didn't. "If you want a menu, go to the Replimat."

"Where the replicators are working," Dax offered, "which it isn't here."

"Oh?" Bashir said. "What happened to the replicator?"

"What happened to the replicator," Quark nodded to Dax. "He wants to know what happened to the replicator -- what does he _think_ happened to the replicator?"

"Haven't the faintest," Bashir grinned at Garak. "Apparently you're suggesting though someone's aim wasn't quite as good as it should have been."

"It was good," Quark assured.

"So it was," Bashir agreed. "Don't remind me -- all right. Nothing alcoholic for me. Something cool, however. Extraordinarily large and attractive to behold -- pink, comes to mind for some reason? Pink and frothy -- strawberry, perhaps? Sherbet? With generous dots of Thalian chocolate?"

"Oh, yes, that sounds potentially delightful," Garak's salivary glands could almost taste the concoction now. "Not too sweet for me, however. Pleasantly tart, if you could manage." 

"Uh, huh," Quark handed him a napkin. "It's a bar, not an ice cream parlor."

"And actually," Dax joked, "if you gave them a frozen daiquiri and a spoon, I doubt if either of them would know the difference."

"Oh, no, we would know, Julian, wouldn't we?" Garak believed.

"Daresay I certainly would. But, no, quite all right. A daiquiri is fine. Reasonably hot, tired and thirsty myself," he smiled at the Chief's empty glass. "Time for another refill? It's on me."

"Uh, huh," O'Brien said. "And then what? Two, three, four more? With a little luck by dinner I'll not have a leg under me?"

"No, I wasn't thinking that at all," Bashir denied. "Merely respecting if it's been a long day for me, I'm certain it's been a longer day for you…and you," he included Dax. "How did it go? Any more earthshaking announcements by Dukat? Or has he spared us today? His mood was certainly vile enough this morning, never mind anyone else's."

"My mood isn't vile," O'Brien insisted.

"No more than you slept through better than half of the proceedings," Bashir nodded. "Daydreamed is probably much more like it -- not that I can't say I'm not rather interested myself in what Janice is planning to wear this evening. I am interested. Profoundly interested," he flashed that grin of his again at Garak. "Nightgown, really? Dare I ask what the gown looks like? Or do you insist upon keeping the Chief and I in suspense?"

"It's not a gown," Garak smiled in return.

"Even better," Bashir accepted his daiquiri from Quark. "With legs like hers, veritable sin to cover them up -- true or false?"

"I believe Julian's asking you," Garak advised Quark.

"No, actually I was asking the Chief," Bashir moistened his smile with the cool, tasty treat. "Certain you've noticed."

"And what if I did?"

"Well then you have to agree. That ghastly beige sackcloth she insists upon wearing has one divine aspect; it's above the knee."

"Well…" chances are Dax had heard enough.

"No, I'm only teasing," Bashir patted her hand soothingly. "So's the Chief."

"_I_ haven't said a word."

"Merely thinking it. Quite all right. To paraphrase something Garak's said, some of us think, others of us do…" he twinkled at Dax. "Do you think it's plausible for the Captain, what with this new found liberalism of his, to agree to extend the rules of acceptable fraternization and allow Janice and I to sit next to each other at dinner time?"

"I've already asked her," O'Brien assured.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I've asked her," O'Brien shrugged, borrowing his spoon and a taste of his daiquiri while he was at it. "And she agrees."

"She agrees to what?"

"That she's got enough on her mind not to have to worry herself about your hormonal rushes," he assured.

"The devil you did."

O'Brien snorted. "The hell I didn't. Ask her…better yet," he handed Bashir back his spoon. "Wait and see. She'll be the one sitting at the table -- next to me. Like you said. Some of us do, others of us dream."

"That's easily rectified, isn't it?" Bashir nodded firmly to Dax. "Tell him. While my interest in Janice is personal, it's also quite innocent -- "

"Oh, please," O'Brien jeered.

"Well within the limits of acceptable contact," Bashir maintained. "Where yours on the other hand is quite clearly fraternization. If I didn't know better myself, I would accuse you of attempting to coerce the Bajoran representative -- "

"Sex," O'Brien assured, fairly loudly. Garak's teeth clamped together so hard it was a sheer wonder he didn't bite his spoon in half. "The only thing I'm trying to coerce is the same as you, and that is sex."

"Sex…" Bashir stammered like he never heard the word before in his life, his startled eyes wide.

"Sex," O'Brien reiterated even louder. "S.E.X. And she was appreciative."

"Appreciative," Bashir repeated to Garak busy moping his brow.

"Appreciative," he alerted Quark.

"Hey," Quark waved, "you're talking to a guy who's been married to a Klingon and has the scars to prove it -- give me that," he snagged the napkin away from Garak, promptly proceeding to fan himself. "Is it hot in here, or is it me?"

"It's hot in here," O'Brien directed. "Get me another beer."

"You and me both," Quark headed for the bar.

"Yes, well, appreciative," Bashir nodded to Dax, "what woman could resist such an invitation, the Chief's quite right."

"Not exactly," Dax said.

"What?" O'Brien sneered. "Oh, excuse me. He's not looking for sex. He's looking for a forty-eight hour _relationship_."

"That's not the point."

"Hardly," Bashir agreed. "You're not only being crass, you're talking extremely loud."

"I'm being crass. I'm talking loudly -- "

"Yes," Dax said in support of her pal Julian, a real shocker there. 

"Uh, huh. Like anyone cares…Like anyone…" O'Brien pushed himself away from the table ready to stand up and announce it to world.

"Chief!" Dax had him by the arm yanking him back down in his seat.

"Really cares," O'Brien took his beer from Quark with a toast of Bashir. "You started it."

"No, I didn't start anything…"

"Actually…" In the not too distant background Hawk sauntered up to his squad posting guard over the Federation representative O'Brien and his guests. "He did start it. But the Chief's right. Who cares? Do you care?"

No, his agents didn't care. Only about the conference. The one yet to be canceled despite all their noteworthy efforts. "Gentleman," Hawk acknowledged, "I admit, I was close to running out of ideas. Was close." He sent an agent scurrying to find a piece of paper, anything on which to scrawl a note. The agent returned with one of the Ferengi's data padds; it would do.

"What about the pictures?" He was asked as he cleared the padd's log, neatly typing in a note from Lange.

"What about them? They're Winn's. She paid for them. The only thing we can do is insure Chancellor Gowron receives his own autographed copy -- other than that?" he returned the data padd to his agent. "I would say a couple of hours from now, our job will truly be done."

"Excuse me, you started it," O'Brien insisted.

"I beg to differ," Bashir was equally emphatic, "I didn't start anything -- "

"Julian!" Dax's spots were dark, her tone as intolerant of him as it was for the Chief. Garak just continued to sit there.

"I didn't start it," Bashir repeated.

"Yes, you did -- but that!" her waving hand silenced him. "Is not the point."

"No, hardly," Garak carefully sipped from his spoon. "The point is -- "

"Sex," Bashir nodded.

"I'm married," O'Brien sneered.

"I've got to get a better life," Quark informed the Bajoran Special Forces officer looking to join the party and stop a fight. "It's okay. They're friends. Ask her."

"Yes, it's fine," Dax reassured the officer who had apparently not wandered his way over from the assigned squad of sentries, but had wandered his way in from the Promenade with a message for the Chief.

"Yes, well," Bashir grinned as O'Brien took the data padd, "it's probably unrealistic to claim the Captain heard you all the way on Ops, but it's possible -- "

"Ah, ha!" O'Brien bounded to his feet with a gloating shout, shy of dancing a jig and practically knocking the Bajoran officer to the ground. "What did I tell you? What did I tell you?"

"Well, I don't know," Bashir agreed as the Chief's hands slammed down on the table, a grin on his face stretching from ear to ear, "what did you tell me?"

"Read it and weep," O'Brien flipped him the padd. "Go on, read it. She wants me, okay? What did I tell you? She wants _me."_

"Janice, he means," Bashir nodded as he read. "It's from Janice. By wanting him he means she wants to see him. Now. Before dinner. She's already bribed -- pardon me, alerted her security detail he's en route to discuss some of the finer points of the autopsies performed on the Bajoran cadavers… Nothing more specific than that. Certainly ambiguous, at that. Gruesome even. Until one pencils in the panting and outlines the aching, heated body begging to be held."

"You know I knew it?" O'Brien took a breath with a point of his finger at Dax. "I knew it. I knew it the moment we met. Something in her eyes…I don't know, something in the _air._ I just knew it."

"And now we all know it, too," Bashir handed the padd to Dax with a smile. "Bravo. Touché. A fair round of applause -- mind if I finish my dinner now? Or dessert, as it actually is?"

"What?" O'Brien scoffed. "You think it's a joke?"

"Think it's a joke?" Bashir spooned up a liberal helping of his melting daiquiri with a shake of his head. "No, I don't think it's a joke. I know it's a joke -- quite all right," he waved the Bajoran officer away to resume doing what he had been doing; an officer who had paused, Garak noticed, only long enough to look mildly confused, but then he did go about his own way. "No doubt the joke is also on you -- one of the fellows in engineering? Is that who you got to write the letter -- or love note, I actually should say?"

"No, that's not who I got to write the note."

"Well, you're certainly not suggesting Janice wrote the note, are you?" Bashir borrowed the padd from Dax to share its contents with Garak. "The spelling's atrocious, in the first place -- "

"The spelling's fine," Dax answered quietly.

Bashir grinned. "Now she's really mad. You know, you can always tell when Jadzia is truly angry," he set about seeing what he could do about whipping his daiquiri back into some sort of shape, "as opposed to merely annoyed. Those spots of hers -- yours," his eyes glittered over Dax, "quite literately flame charcoal black. Like they are now. Precisely. Exactly as they are now."

"Excuse me," O'Brien retrieved his padd from Garak. "But I'm late for a date."

He left. No one even attempted to stop him. Why should they? It was only a joke. A fairly childish one, if Bashir said so himself.

He did say so. To Dax. "It's a joke," he promised her. "If you don't think it's a joke, isn't it your responsibility to stop him? Captain Sisko's decision to bend the rules are one thing. He is the Captain, after all. Well within his authority to twist them into knots if he feels so inclined. The Chief, on the other hand, doesn't have any such authority, as he is clearly breaking the rules, not merely bending them --- that is, if it wasn't a joke," he assured Quark. "It is a joke," he nodded to Garak.

"Oh, yes," Garak upheld the viability of that theory. "Though is it possible, Julian?" he wondered quite innocently. "That the joke is also on Chief O'Brien? I mean to say," he explained, "did you notice how the Bajoran officer hesitated momentarily before he obeyed your order and went about his way?"

"Well, he hesitated," Bashir felt, "because he hadn't the faintest idea what any of this was all about. I seriously doubt if he realized he was party to a joke -- I believe I mentioned that. No, I'm quite confident he quite seriously believed he was delivering a valid message to the Chief."

"Oh, I believe that also," Garak assured, "Julian, I do. I'm merely saying -- "

"I know what you're saying. You're saying as much as the Chief's been sounding off to us, he's likely been sounding off to half the engineering staff."

"Yes," Garak nodded.

"And it's possible one of the fellows, or two of the fellows, or half of the damn crew got it into their heads to tease the Chief of their own volition."

"Exactly," Garak smiled.

"And won't Miles' face be red?" Bashir finished the last of his daiquiri with a lick of his spoon. "When he shows up at Janice's door and she hasn't the faintest why he's standing there?"

"Yes," Garak nodded. "And under those guidelines, Julian, wouldn't it be prudent of us to at least notify Major Kira -- "

"Kira has an appointment with Lange," Dax handed Quark Julian's glass.

"Does she?" Garak beamed. "No doubt to discuss some finer points of today's conference."

"Yes," Dax stood up.

"Oh, well, see now, Julian?" Garak chided him. "Under those guidelines it's entirely possible it isn't a joke at all. It very well may be that Major Kira instructed Doctor Lange to invite Chief O'Brien -- not to discuss the conference, but to use that opportunity to validate the medical findings concur with the engineering analyses. With Major Kira in attendance, there can clearly be no impropriety."

"I'm sure that's it," Dax nodded.

"Of course," Garak's tongue eased its way to stroking his lips, "Chief O'Brien quite clearly is of another impression entirely. I'm forced to agree with you. Won't his face be red?"

"Before or after Janice slaps it?" Bashir laughed.

"Either way," Garak tipped his head. "Either way."

The security of the Bajoran corridor had already been compromised. Its staff of six long dead and replaced by Hawk and his agents before O'Brien exited the Promenade, stepping into a turbolift to exit on Lange's floor. The Chief pushed his hair back with a nervous nod for the approaching Task Leader, half of his senses screaming at him what the hell did he think he was doing. That wasn't what came out of his mouth though. What came out of his mouth was that he had a scheduled appointment with Doctor Lange. The data padd he held ready in his hand in case the officer requested to see it.

He didn't. "Yes, we've been notified," Hawk nodded easily, directing O'Brien down toward the middle of the corridor; fourth cabin on his left.

He was kind of a small guy compared to the others with him and the others the Chief had seen around. Not short, slender. O'Brien made a mental note somewhere in the back of his brain, one not to be remembered. Out loud he said, "Thanks. Shouldn't be long."

"Take your time," Hawk estimated by his calculations it would be ninety minutes or more before Kira Nerys showed for her appointment; if she showed at all.

"What?" Janice groaned in mock frustration with Anon appearing on her monitor screen for the third time in less than twenty minutes. "I told you, Kira promised we'd meet before dinner."

"What can you say in ten minutes?" Anon anticipated Kira would be late.

"Well, not too much, if you're right," Janice shrugged. "So, I guess in that case it will have to be after dinner -- either way," she blew him a kiss before he could yell, "I'll see you at dinner -- 2200?"

"Yes, 2200 -- You know it's 2200. And that's not good enough, Janice," he insisted. "I want this settled. I couldn't even think today -- except about you."

"That makes two of us," Janice rested on her console, smiling back at him.

"I'm serious."

"So am I," she blew him another kiss, swaying gently in time to some imaginary tune.

"What are you doing?" Anon frowned.

"Music," she laughed. "Can't you hear it?"

"No, I can't -- I can hear that, though," he assured as her door sounded. "Who is it? Kira? Finally?"

"Yes, of course it's Kira," Janice signed off with another laugh and one last kiss.

It wasn't Kira. Janice didn't remember anything after that, or even before. Not the conversation with Anon, or the conference. The last thing she remembered, if she remembered anything of the day at all, was lying in Anon's arms listening to him fuss about her returning with him to Cardassia Prime.

The Chief remembered the conference. The conversation in the bar with Garak and Bashir; Dax and Quark got lost in the shuffle somewhere. He remembered as far as standing in the doorway saying something like, "Yeah, hi," with an indicating shake of the padd in his hand. "Got your note." After that?? A shove maybe? Against his back? Hard maybe? Maybe not. Could have just taken him by surprise. A mild burning sensation along the side of this throat? Kind of like a bee sting, but then kind of not? After that it was a total blank. Totally.

It was almost 2200. "What?" Kira's head dropped down on Odo's desk amid the pile of witness and security interrogations with Dax's appearance in the security office. "Don't tell me. I'm sure it's not anything I want to hear."

"Nothing earth shattering," Dax smiled. "Just saying I thought you had an appointment with Lange?"

"I'm running late," Kira admitted. "It's not my fault. It's Odo's."

"Two hours," Dax nodded. "It's all right. I'm sure the Chief and Lange are as bogged down with their engineering and forensic comparisons."

Kira's eyes searched Odo for a moment before she sat up to search Dax.

"You're late," Dax reminded. "Two hours."

"Back up," Kira waved. "Back up."

"How far? To the conference? Quark's? Or Lange's note to the Chief inviting him to compare analyses?"

"That far," Kira pointed and was out, across the Promenade, heading for a turbolift.

"Yes, well, I don't think there's a reason to panic," Dax smiled at Odo. "It is just a joke."

"What is?" Odo grunted.

"The Chief has a crush on Lange?"

"Who hasn't?"

Dax looked at him. He shrugged. "Explains why she's the one inviting him to see her forensic analyses."

"She isn't inviting him," Dax began to say. She stopped.

"Who is?" Odo remained interested.

"I don't know," Dax stared out across the Promenade to Kira vanishing with the turbolift. "Either the Chief is inviting himself, or the engineering staff is teasing him -- if it is a joke. Actually it only made sense to me if Kira had instructed Lange to include the Chief in their meeting." Which, no, clearly Kira had not. "Maybe there is…perhaps not a reason to panic…"

"But perhaps one way to find out," Odo was already rounding his desk.

"Come on," Kira urged the turbolift crawling its way through the maze of sections and levels in search of its destination. "I'll kill him. That's what I'll do, I'll just kill him." And then everything would be fine. The door finally swished open. Six Special Forces officers, every last one of them Federation, and not ten minutes into their turn of duty, snapped to immediate attention. "Major Kira Nerys," Kira barked her ID on a fast stalk past the Task Leader for Lange's cabin. "How long has he been here?"

There was either something wrong with the Task Leader, or there was something wrong with her. It wasn't her. "The Chief," she leaned heavily on Lange's buzzer, repeatedly pressing it. "O'Brien. He's here, isn't he?"

There was either still something wrong with the Task Leader, or there was something wrong with her. There wasn't anything wrong with either of them. The Chief wasn't there. "Okay, so he isn't here," Kira accepted that. O'Brien wasn't there and Lange had just stepped into the shower running late as usual and she…

"I…" Kira took a needed, calming breath. "I'll just kill Dax instead -- a joke," she reassured the security Captain snapping immediately back to life. "It's just a joke. It's a stupid joke, but it's just a joke -- come on!" she aimed a frustrated punch straight into Lange's door. "Janice? It's Kira, can you hear me?" Of course she couldn't hear her. If she couldn't hear the buzzer, she couldn't hear her. She was in the shower.

"Open it," Kira instructed the Task Leader. "Will you just open it!" she hammered him into the door. "I told you it's a practical joke -- not me, Dax!" 

He obeyed. Following a discreet, confirming nod from his Deputy Major Kira Nerys was on the roster of scheduled visitors. Two hours ago and also ten minutes from now to act as additional escort for Doctor Lange. Ten minutes early the Task Leader could live with. What happened to delay the Bajoran Major Kira two hours ago he really didn't care. The door swished open on command and the two of them stood there. Somewhere in the shambles of the living area Lange lay naked and strangled by her twisted beige hose still wrapped tightly around her neck. Her face so contorted and dark blue it was almost black. At some point she had vomited. Urinated and bled at some other. The Chief was also naked, just getting to his knees and groping his way toward her.

"Get out of the way!" Kira shoved the Task Leader aside; twice her height and twice her size. She didn't even feel her hand connect with O'Brien; her knuckles shattering with the force of her strike that sent him backwards and back to sleep. She was down on her knees, ripping at the torn beige stocking encircling Lange's neck, screaming over her com badge for Dax, Worf, Odo, anyone who would listen.

"Oh, my God," the stocking came apart in her hands. Lange's throat was crushed, flattened like some sick-looking rag doll. Her hands, arms and chest seemed icy cold; they were so white. "Find something!" Kira shouted over her shoulder to the security squad pounding into the cabin upon their Leader's shout. "Anything! She's not breathing…no, she's not, she's not…" she searched desperately for any sign of a pulse, anywhere. The slightest breath; there was none. She pried open Lange's twisted mouth, attempting to gasp air into her lungs.

"Kira…" Dax was on her knees at her side. Odo was there a breath later, moving Dax aside.

"Cut it, we have to cut it," Kira grabbed Odo's hand, his pointing finger metomorphsizing into a sharp, narrow knife. "Her windpipe. She needs air…"

"Here?" Odo touched Lange's neck.

"Yes, there," Kira nodded. "There…anywhere. Cut it, Odo -- just, cut it!" she pressed the point of the blade down into the small of Lange's throat, puncturing the flesh through to her shattered windpipe. There was a gurgling sound, two or three tiny streams of blood trickling down from the tiny wound. 

"Now open," Kira nodded. "We have to keep it open…" she pinched the incision as open as she dared, whistling her breath sharply down into Lange's throat in an attempt to clear the obstructed airway. Her free hand groped for her com badge hearing Dax say something like "I think it's working, Kira, keep breathing into her throat."

Kira took a deep breath, managing, "Kira to Doctor Bashir…" before she exhaled into Lange, leaving Odo to complete the call for Bashir and emergency medical beam out.

Odo completed it. "Infirmary. On the double, Bashir. No one cares if you're in your underwear. Throw a coat over it."

Kira was gone with Lange. Dax settled back on her heels, wiping the back of her hand across her mouth as she stared at the Chief lying unconscious on the floor. 

"Probably should have a look at him also," Odo grunted.

"Yes," Dax got to her feet.

"Yes, well, don't do that," Odo stopped the Task Leader from finding O'Brien's trousers amidst the rest of the trash. "You've heard of false modesty, and you've heard of evidence -- that's evidence. Don't touch it."

"Evidence?" Dax looked up from finding the Chief's pulse without having to look for it twice.

"Unless you have a better explanation for what happened in here," Odo nodded sharply.

"No," Dax said. "No, I don't have an explanation."

"Neither do I," Odo assured. But he would. He hailed Sisko over his com badge. "Need you. In the Infirmary. Need you now. I'm on my way. When Worf gets here," he instructed Dax when he signed off, "he's to seal the corridor and himself in this cabin; no one in until I or Captain Sisko say otherwise. You follow with the Chief. As far as you…" he advised the Federation Task Leader and his elite squad of five. "We'll save the politics for the politicians. You're all under arrest. An appropriate prelude to a complete investigation into just what did go on in here. If I were you, I wouldn't try anything cute. Not only am I a Changeling, you'll find I'm not in the mood."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Bashir was in the Infirmary reviewing evening rounds with Michelle when Kira's garbled call, followed by Odo, came over his com badge. It was becoming redundant to say it wasn't a typical hail, or one that he expected; but it wasn't. The clear urgency in Kira's voice, and also Odo's, was obvious. It was something much more than simply startling moments later when a frantic Kira transported; the computer neatly setting down the nude and nearly unrecognizable body of Janice Lange on a examining table.

"Good Lord…" escaped Bashir's lips in the microsecond before he reacted, grabbing for a neural stimulator as Michelle grabbed for a trac set. "I'll need a full thoracic and neural team…" he directed whoever it was joining them.

"Hangman's fracture is complete at C-6," Michelle reported. "Reflexes are negative…aspirated and inducing respiration now." 

"I tried…" Kira gasped at her side.

"You did fine…" Michelle's attention was on the diagnostic screens tracking Bashir's desperate attempt to revive Lange's deadened brain.

"Anything?" Bashir insisted.

"No," Michelle shook her head.

__

No? Kira heard her wrong. She stared at the blank and silent display, reaching dumbly for Bashir. "What does she mean no…"

"Damn it all," Bashir was kicking the bed release free and aiming Lange for the operating room. Kira stood there, listening to his only promise, "I'll let you know." 

She took a step toward the closing doors. "What? You'll let me know what -- Bashir!" A savage, primal cry wrenched loose from her soul, her fists striking something.

"Major!" it was Sisko; he held her by the wrists.

"She's dead," Kira could feel her head moving. "Lange's dead."

"Dead…" The Captain's confused stare moved from her to the doors to the missing examining bed to Bashir's Michelle Faraday disconnecting the neural displays.

"He's trying now," Faraday agreed.

Sisko almost said "Thank you" by instinct. 

"He choked her!" Kira screamed. "The son-of-a-bitch choked her! Why?"

"Choked…" Sisko's head snapped up with the computer announcing a second emergency transport; it was Dax with the Chief.

"Excuse me," Faraday's nod was for the medical staff hurrying to join her; one of them was a doctor; Sisko didn't know his name. Kira's hands he felt hit his chest with the power to take his breath away; she was free of his grasp and it was a moment's wrestle with Dax to catch her and hold her back from O'Brien.

"Major!" Sisko insisted, understanding her anger as well as he could understand his own rising long before he knew the details, if any of them at all, other than something about Lange, and now the Chief. "It's O'Brien!"

"Yes," Odo was taking possession of Kira from the two of them, "we know. You might want to cancel dinner." He wasn't being droll, he was being truthful.

So was Dax. "Yes, we do know. It's worse than it looks."

"Superficial lacerations aside," Odo held Kira's bruised and swollen hand gently.

"He choked her, Odo." She was largely incoherent under the tears and hate.

"Yes," Dax attempted to maintain her objectivity, extending O'Brien that required benefit of the doubt. "So it would seem."

"At first glance," Odo directed Sisko's confusion away from him back to the Chief lying on the examining bed wearing the imprint of Kira's knuckles and not too much of anything else. 

"Choked, Constable?" there was a clear attempt on the Captain's part to distance himself from what everyone seemed to be implying; he failed. There was a catch in his harsh reply; insistent and demanding.

"As in strangled," Odo complied. "He wrung her neck."

"He did more than that," Nurse Faraday was coolly professional in her answer and assisting examination; Odo eyed the physician he likewise didn't know really from Sisko's Adam.

"Yes, Constable," Sisko assured, "Doctor Lange is apparently dead."

Odo grunted. "Yes, well, the only thing that changes is the nature of the charge -- from attempted murder, to murder. For many of the whys, you'll need Bashir." He stopped the attentive doctor from continuing. When he stopped him, the others stopped; Faraday included. "For the rest of them, you'll need you and I."

"He'll keep," Faraday supported leaving O'Brien to the capable hands of Bashir once they were available. So make that coldly professional in her answer as well as her treatment; the hand holding the Chief's bruised chin lacked the loving care of the one that held her tricorder.

"Insofar as analyses or treatment?" Odo verified. "He's intoxicated, isn't he? How intoxicated? Are we talking about amnesia or potential of seizure?"

"Four beers?" Dax buried herself in remembering Quark's while Faraday studied the initial screenings. "Maybe five?"

"More than that," Faraday announced a blood alcohol level roughly five times that with Bajoran ale being the least of the two culprits; the potential for amnesia was there.

"It was a couple of hours ago," Dax explained to Sisko. "The Chief may have had something else to drink -- apparently he did."

Odo nodded to Kira. "As did you probably hit him harder than you realized."

"As I believe you mean seizure, Constable," the resident physician removed Odo's hand from his wrist to secure his hypospray. "I'll not risk this man's life, regardless of what he may have done."

"No, of course not, doctor," Sisko agreed quietly. "Stabilize him. But other than that -- "

"The call is Bashir's," Odo instructed.

"Other than necessary analyses to preserve -- " Sisko was more perturbed by the condition of Kira's hand than Odo's interruption.

"Evidence," Odo nodded.

"Indeed," Sisko stiffened. "Evidence of what exactly, Constable? Are you telling me you truly believe the Chief -- "

"He was found in her quarters," Odo identified.

"Lange's quarters," Dax clarified. "Worf's there now."

As no doubt Sisko would be interested in hearing the results of all analyses, notwithstanding the explanation behind Dax's mention of four or five beers. "Interested in that myself," Odo informed her.

"Yes," Dax understood. "You'll want to talk to Julian; Garak and Quark also."

But first there was that dinner waiting to be canceled not merely delayed.

"Damn Damar, Constable!" Sisko was already exiting the Infirmary to tell the Legate precisely that, together with where he could put his conference, along with Shakaar, the UFP and anyone else.

"Is Lange dead?" Odo wondered beside him in the turbolift. Kira about as interested in joining them as she was inclined to leave the Infirmary and Lange; which she refused to do. Insubordination or not. Federation, Bajoran, and anyone's commission aside. She ripped her insignia of rank and status (which, yes, happened to be Bajoran in its commission this year) from the collar of her uniform, and flung it across the room in response to Sisko's order of accompaniment. That was all right. Good chances were Commander Dax would, after a few respectable minutes, locate Kira's insignia and return it to her along with encouraging words of relaxation and the offer of an opportunity to try and make some sense out of all of this; no doubt a discussion that would be to Dax's benefit as well.

As no doubt Sisko would forgive and forget about Kira's outburst; as he had forgiven and forgotten a few times before. Continuing not only to respect, but to like her, as he respected and liked everyone of his senior staff, the Chief hardly an exception.

"To the contrary, Constable," Sisko seethed in answer to Odo's question, "I have little idea as to the actual condition of Doctor Lange; less apparently than any of you."

"Strangulation," Odo reiterated what had been obvious to him.

"Apparently!"

"As apparently I'm sure Bashir is trying everything he can to revive her."

"I'm certain he is!"

"So at best we may have another Vedek Bareil on our hands," Odo remembered Kira's bedside vigilance of a few years ago beside the gravely and mortally injured Bajoran monk being kept alive by every conceivable mechanical means until Bareil finally did just die; out of sheer exhaustion, no doubt. "Not including the irreparable brain damage and sexual assault; rape," he clarified to Sisko's confounded expression. "What did you think Faraday meant?"

"Again, little idea, apparently, Constable," Sisko insisted.

"It's what she meant," Odo assured. "Little question as to the actual nature of the attack, as well as Lange's unwilling participation."

"As does it happen, Constable," Sisko charged. "Perhaps in your culture." He actually meant in anyone's culture other than his; Human. He stopped where he was; outside the cabin door of Damar. Incredulous to say the least at hearing what he was having to hear; the demands of the towering Sentinel Tan not even registering. "Surely there's another explanation, Constable -- there has to be."

"If he were Klingon," Odo grunted with an eye over Tan; it not entirely propaganda to suggest the Cardassians were as involved and concerned with the well-being of their stomachs as they were a few other things.

"Klingon?" Sisko demanded.

"He isn't," Odo agreed. No more than the Chief was Cardassian; more specifically Dukat. "Our Dukat," he assured Tan justifiable or unjustifiably wondering just what was going on. "Not yours…or should I say," he drawled, "not his sons?"

"What about the Emperor?" Tan insisted. "His days are not over anymore than his reign; more than Gowron will see."

Odo nodded. "Just as I thought. It's all right. While we can blame Dukat for a lot of things, we can't blame him for this. No more than we can likely blame his sons -- or Mister Damar." The next nod was for Sisko; who he meant by 'he' was O'Brien. "Who he isn't also is Bajoran. Your guess is as good as mine at the moment what actually went on."

"But I will know, Constable," Sisko swore. "Irrespective of how it looks at the moment -- "

"Irrespective," Odo agreed, "of how it looks at the moment turning out to be how it is; or was."

Sisko stared at him. That was all right. Damar stared at the two of them. When they entered his quarters unannounced, and harder seconds later when Sisko informed him, Emperor or bench-warmer, he would have make do with what the replicator had to offer as far as dinner that evening, breakfast tomorrow morning before he left; if he left; he would leave. Quickly and of his own accord. Following answering a few questions satisfactorily. The first and most natural one being where was he? Where had he been between the hours of 1700 and now; 2210? 

"Where have I _been?"_ There was ring of truth in Damar's retort coupled with a strong, though strained suggestion of interest in wanting to know why. Why the question. Why, and what lay as the reason or reasons behind it?

Those were questions Sisko wanted to answer about as much as he might want to know the answers himself.

"A matter of record," Odo relieved the Captain for the time being of having to answer with a grunt for the Sentinel Tan accompanying them into the Emperor's chambers. "That's all. Answer it -- both of you, and we'll move on to the Dukats; physically, if necessary."

"I wouldn't think it will be necessary, Constable," Sisko replied quietly. "I doubt if Legate Damar has any trouble with answering for himself or his staff."

Damar laughed suddenly. "Here, of course. Entertain me, Sisko. Where do you think _I_ have been? May have been? Should or shouldn't have?" His glassy eyes danced over the giant Tan scowling down on the stiff and uncooperative Federation Commander of Terok Nor teasing them with hints of some new catastrophe happening, happened, or waiting to. "Answer them, Tan. Tell him where I, you -- _Dukat _and his brother have been keeping ourselves? Eh? What have we been doing?"

"A matter of record?" Tan ignored Damar, whatever he was talking about, or thought he was talking about; apparently the Emperor thought he was talking about something. What Damar thought he was talking about was probably nothing more than knowing Sisko and the Constable Odo had to be talking about something themselves. "What matter? Should we even care? If not, why not? What are your accusations? Do you have any? They're lies, all of them, if they have anything to do with us."

"Well, now that that's settled," Odo grunted to Sisko.

"A matter of security, obviously, Legate," Sisko indulged Damar that far and a little further. "Doctor Lange is in the Infirmary."

There was a slight hesitation to Damar's response, followed quickly by a smirk. "Visiting someone? Or as a victim herself this time of some extremist's ill temper? Surely you don't suspect any of us, Captain? You can't be serious as Tan suggests, if you do."

"Who says we can't?" Odo countered, reading the lacking reaction of Tan's, he thought accurately. "You're right. You don't care. Not personally. The incident has the appearance of being isolated. Not likely to be repeated against any member of the Cardassian delegation…Politically? Well, that may be another story," he admitted to Sisko. "Is another story."

Sisko quite clearly didn't care either way. "So it is. As a victim, Legate. The conference is canceled as well -- "

"Canceled?" Damar interjected a challenge; useless.

"Unless you plan on sitting there talking among yourselves," Sisko agreed. "Chief O'Brien is also in the Infirmary -- "

"I though you said it was isolated?" Expected or otherwise, the abrupt interjection that time came by way of Tan's demanding hand twisting Odo's tunic tightly in his fist as he twisted the Changeling back to him.

"I did," Odo assured. "As I warned the Federation squad in charge of Lange's security not to try anything stupid -- do I have to warn you?"

Tan glanced over the tunic, no more 'real' than the humanoid flesh it covered; he sneered. "You are as weak as the Emperor always claimed."

"Or as strong as he feared," Odo agreed; either way Tan let him go. "As far as O'Brien you can call him a material witness until we call him otherwise."

He left Damar and his quarters shortly thereafter with Sisko, following the Captain's apprising the Legate he should be able to vacate the premises by morning once the UFP assembly, Shakaar, and of course the Cardassian Civilian Counsel, were informed of the latest unscheduled change in plans. That included the conference being canceled, not merely delayed this time.

"Well done, Sisko," Damar congratulated him and his Federation, and while he was at it First Minister Shakaar of Bajor. "If you think either of you surprise me, think again. I am no more surprised by any attack on Lange, O'Brien, than I was by the attack of Paq or Gul Dukat…" His smile taunted Tan after the Federation left with the malleable Constable Odo. "Dukat may have a different reaction. If I were you, I'd advise him to keep his mouth shut. After all, he wouldn't want to further jeopardize Lange, anymore than he would want to further jeopardize himself -- if you understand what I mean."

Tan took a step closer to Damar; a little too close for the Emperor's liking. "I understand the risks -- do you understand the ones you take?" 

If it was fear the giant hoped to inspire he would be disappointed. "You wouldn't dare."

No more than Tan wouldn't dare to sever the head of Gowron and present it as a gift to the Emperor Dukat. His insulting laugh was brief before he too was gone from Damar's quarters to apprise Anon of what he knew of the situation with the Gul's wife -- and stop him, yes, from amplifying the risks to himself and also her.

"Situation…" Anon expected Sisko, an armed body of Federation security ready to arrest him, Pfrann, all of them, under the ludicrous charge of consorting with known Maquis. The unexplained delay in dinner confirmed his suspicions, heightening his anxiety that Janice was already under arrest; Kira Nerys not exactly a reasonable and understandable woman as he had attempted to explain to her. It wasn't Sisko however barreling his way into his quarters, it was Tan with some insane notification about Janice. "What do you mean situation? What are you talking about Infirmary -- "

"She is with Kira," Pfrann's angry and panicked voice added its support of his brother's halting argument. 

Anon's words were halting because he was in shock. Enraged and exploding a moment later. "Answer me, Tan!"

Tan couldn't answer him; not with details he didn't know. What he did have was the physical strength to stop Anon from finding out for himself; strength that Pfrann lacked.

"I can't just stand here!" Anon desperately clutched at the massive arms holding him back, damning Tan and charging his brother less of a temperament to sit back and do nothing than he was. "Are you? Can you?" he insisted to Pfrann torn between wanting to act and not knowing exactly what to do. 

"He is the commander!" Pfrann released Anon to wildly claw at Tan, his fingers digging into armored hands holding his brother.

Noticed, the pleas of the child went unheeded, as did Anon's. "I have sworn my loyalty to be sworn -- " Tan reminded Anon.

"To me and my father before me," Anon screamed. "My father is a fool and a coward. I am not. His sons are not! Janice is my wife, my brothers' sister, and the Legate's daughter!"

"Now what do you say?" Pfrann insisted to Tan.

"The exchange of insults is not his interest," Anar answered from the background, his phaser rifle in hand, his son Sian beside him. "What is, is your willing risk of exposure …and, yes," he admonished the penetrating stare of Anon's red eyes, feeling the incredibly comforting weight of the rifle in his hand, "I could say other things myself…. Things about Sisko currently issuing an urgent, priority signal to the UFP….As about…" He gazed out the porthole over Anon's shoulder to the blackness of space where he had watched a Bajoran shuttle from Anon's bridge begin her lazy cruise home less than thirty minutes ago. "What has happened? Tell me now. Is it Janice?"

"She lies in the Infirmary," Tan replied. "By Sisko's manner and face, it is an attack. I know little else -- "

"Exposure?" Anon's delayed curse interrupted him. "There isn't anything about Janice or I that can be exposed that they don't know already. Nothing they can claim that they can't prove. They were there -- yes, they were there, last night in the holosuites," he waved Pfrann and his disbelieving whine to silence. "No, I didn't tell you -- why should I tell you?" he charged Anar. "What? They did this to her because they would, because they did. I told you yesterday they wanted Janice, not me. I told you the only protection I could give her was to leave -- then, not waiting until now and all of this to happen. I told you -- " he was going to break down. His hand reaching toward Anar wanted the phaser rifle. Sian's hand reaching to stop him ended up supporting the shaking arm until he was roughly pushed away.

"You don't have to kill me," Anon promised Anar. "Not you, Klingons, or anyone. If Janice dies or is dead, I will kill me and that will take care of everything."

Anar believed him. A belief that should inspire a glimmer of hope the Prophets' will of protection might extend to Janice and find her still alive. "It's not your throat I want, Anon. You should have called me."

"To do what? The same as me! Nothing! You think I don't understand what they're saying to me? Tan, Pfrann, everyone -- you!" his accusation included Anar. "'It's not cowering, Anon.' 'It's not hiding.' 'If you race to be with your wife -- if you even _attempt_ to find out what has happened to her, you _increase_ the risk of danger to her, you _change_ nothing!'"

The words were strong and true enough to find Sian immediately switching sides. "So, by the Prophets, what do we do instead?" he demanded of his father. "He's right. We cannot just stand here."

Anar turned from the pulsating anger of his son to address Tan. "It's interesting they seem to think we stand so easily."

"We do not stand easily," Tan assured.

"No," Anar agreed, "we do not. Sisko must tell you something -- he has to."

Tan shook his head. "An isolated incident, not a political affair."

"That is ridiculous," Pfrann sneered. 

"Not if the UFP has decided between itself to acknowledge the terrorist faction to be Maquis," Anar cautioned. "They would say anything to avoid such a confrontation with the Union -- "

"A confrontation that we can give them," Tan strode for the console to signal Cardassia Prime. "The faction is identified to be Maquis protected by Shakaar. The Federation will tell us nothing though their own representative lies injured now, as does the Bajoran Neutral -- what do you think?"

"As has the Bajoran Neutral been identified to be the wife of Gul Dukat…it is clearly a conspiracy against us," Anar thoughtfully considered Tan's proposal of forcing the Federation's hand.

"Has she been identified?" Tan insisted to Anon. "You are sure of this? Talk, Anon. You argue easily, talk now."

"Of course I'm sure!" Anon snapped. "They were there -- _we_ were there. Together. _Joined._ What do you think they thought?"

A reasonably embarrassing situation for most, Anar would have to agree. Still, "That doesn't make Janice your mate, Anon. Shakaar and the UFP will condemn her as mistress perhaps, but no one will be talking about a wife."

Tan remained in agreement with Anar. "What the Civilian Counsel and Central Command know of Janice they will likewise deny by their silence."

"To avoid accusations of a Cardassian conspiracy," Anar understood. "Will they deny to themselves the abounding rumors of Martok's claims of Gowron en route?"

"They are not rumors," Tan maintained. "Perhaps only of Gowron en route. I do not see the Chancellor to be that foolish or that brave to openly defy the Federation just yet."

"So he leaves Martok to build the foundation of unity with Winn while he rebuilds the strength of the Empire." The long range plans and goals of the Klingon Chancellor made sense to Anar. As were their reasons and outcome the same as they always were regardless of the players names. Greed, conquest, control. Shakaar was seeing nothing except the outbreak of civil war everywhere he looked. Abandonment by the Federation. The occupation of Terok Nor by Klingons. Janice Lange as unimportant to him as she was important to Anar. He would abandon her as he had now been forced to abandon the conference.

"Where is your father when we need him?" Anar sighed to Pfrann. "He could scream, shout and carry on, demanding to know everything and no one would think twice as to the reason why. Anon they would question, as they would question you -- yes, go ahead and submit the transmission exactly as you said," he nodded to Tan. "Identified Maquis protected by Shakaar. While the Civilian Council's shouts of conspiracy may not move Adon to a confession they will at least get his attention…If only because they are true…As he knew…" he cast his phaser rifle aside before he used it; not on himself or Anon. "What is this about O'Brien? Sisko's insistence of random violence _is _absurd if his engineer lies injured as well. No one is yet safe, nor can they be. Even Damar has to realize that. He cannot just simply accept Sisko's explanation, anymore than you can be expected to accept it."

"A material witness the Changeling claims," Tan snorted. "His choice of words is gibberish to me. I know of O'Brien from the old wars. No bigger or smaller a bastard than I. I am surprised he would fall into such a position, if that is what you mean."

"Not exactly," Anar admitted to Anon. "Thinking more of a Bajoran shuttle I watched leave not a half an hour ago. With the conference canceled Hawk may be gone -- he likely is. It's possible, I suppose, O'Brien just got in the way."

Anon cared nothing about O'Brien. "Hawk told Janice that. Last night. The conference is to be canceled, Janice Lange, or I will kill you, if I kill no one else. I'm telling you he wasn't interested in me -- my flesh, yes! Cardassian! I could have been Damar; Paq! He said as much!"

"I heard you," Anar's hand touched his shoulder. "As you heard me tell you, you should have called me. Hawk doesn't threaten so much as he mocks; a sick pleasure for him."

Anon was silent for a moment. "They have pictures of us to embarrass and destroy her and still Janice didn't believe they would. She wanted to talk to Kira about being a liaison between you and Sisko -- I agreed," his frustration rose again quickly, "because I couldn't get her to agree with anything I said! I was there when Kira came to her quarters -- on the com system talking to Janice! This doesn't make any sense. It can't be Hawk, it has to be Sisko. They must be interrogating her. I expected arrest, not this. It isn't going to take Kira two hours to decide yes or no; it's too long ago!"

It was unless Kira also fell to Hawk's blade. That might assist in explaining Anar's continuing visions of the child Ziyal beyond her genetic link to her brothers; the child was half-Bajoran. The life of her former guardian no more or less at stake than anyone else. Was it Kira's soul Ziyal waited to take in hand rather than Anon's or Pfrann's? Anar glanced across the room to Tan. "The Changeling said nothing of Kira? Only O'Brien?"

Tan snorted a boastful confidence in a woman he claimed not to know. "Nerys? She wears her Prophets around her neck like a charm. The ghost of Bareil at her side. That _I_ say. No one else has to."

Anar took that to be a no. "Did you see Kira?" he returned to the sour face of Anon. "Hear her? The Federation doesn't interrogate like you and I think of interrogation -- perhaps some of them do, but somehow I don't see Sisko prodding Janice with electrical shocks. Are you sure it was Kira, is what I'm asking you. Could it have been O'Brien? Material witness is a Federation legal term. Someone with substantial knowledge of a crime -- often because they were involved."

"I heard the door, yes. Janice said it was Nerys -- assumed, yes, probably," he acknowledged, "it was Nerys. What are you saying?"

"I'm saying…" Anar could see the resemblance to the sister Ziyal in Anon's broad, strong face. It was little wonder he recognized her, realized who she was despite the hundreds of thousands of others just like her. "To whom did Hawk threaten to expose you and Janice? Sisko? Shakaar?"

"The galaxy," Anon's pause was slight before answering. "The Federation, Bajor, everyone. Half of who would care and the other half who wouldn't. You're thinking it is random violence; Sisko's claim. No, I don't believe that. Who would keep silent if they knew about Janice and me? Satisfying themselves by attacking only Janice instead?"

"Hawk for one," Anar assured. "Many, if not most of his agents; possibly even Shakaar. Certainly Damar. Who can't know yet about Janice and you is Sisko. He would come straight to you, not Damar. If I didn't know Hawk as well as I do, I might believe myself in Sisko's claim of a random attack against Janice."

Anon was not satisfied. "Why would O'Brien be there?'

"To post watch over Janice while Kira went to talk with Sisko," Sian proposed.

"No, Nerys would call the Trill Dax." Anon insisted, his own discipline speaking for others. "Their appointed security supervisor."

"You forget who does know of Janice is Garak," Pfrann answered quietly. "Quark; Leeta."

Anon didn't forget anything; least of all anything to do with Janice. He remained as terrified as he was angry. "I could wait two hours and know everything, or I could still be sitting here in silence. Listen to them and even if I send you with Tan to the Infirmary I jeopardize Janice. My wife may be harmed; I don't know how seriously. Turning my back is my only chance of helping her?"

"What are you asking me?" Pfrann regarded him hesitantly.

"For forgiveness of what he knows is true," Anar's arm spread itself across Anon's shoulders. "Help Tan with monitoring the communications; it is at least something. Janice's injuries may only be slight or not at all; an episode of fright. She may have revealed the incident of last night to Kira in their talk. Humans are fascinated with psychological therapy, it may be why she's in the Infirmary. What Sisko refuses to tell Damar he will have to divulge to the UFP and Shakaar; this way you will at least know."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

"We need Nerys," Pfrann watched his brother's retreat.

Rather than Kira. Tan was not the only one who spoke of the Major in familiar, occasionally cloaked ways. Anar should be suspicious of Kira's background before he was interested; he was slightly mystified. The face of Kira Nerys was attractive, strikingly so with her brutal military hair. Her slender form, feminine. Her temper, searing and hot. She had not escaped Anar's attention, anymore than he understood she had escaped his nephew Adon's, or would have escaped Dukat's. "Janice's belief also apparently," he agreed with Pfrann. "I know as little about Kira Nerys; other than a name."

Pfrann eyed him. "Nerys would talk to me. For whatever reasons you care to believe or imagine."

"Less interest in even attempting," Anar promised. "What I do know is your father would howl his demands through the halls of Terok Nor with no regard for the welfare of anyone. Anon can't do that. Are you telling me you can?"

"No, I can't do that," Pfrann shook his head. "I care for Janice even if I don't love her like you or Anon. I think it's Garak, not Hawk behind the attack."

His father's enemy rather than his tramp Leeta or the Ferengi Quark who would sell his mother's soul. "Your reasoning is sound, merely wrong. It's Hawk."

"Revenge for Ziyal," no one would ever convince Pfrann otherwise. "Garak would see an opportunity in Hawk to destroy Dukat; he would not let it pass."

"Garak's revenge would be misplaced. Damar killed Ziyal, not your father -- I know a little, yes," Anar acknowledged, "about your sister Ziyal. Who doesn't?"

Pfrann shrugged. "Pain is pain. We inflict pain; you should know that. Anon has his father's pain."

"And Garak is now satisfied," Anar mused. "Interesting."

Pfrann looked at him. "We are also never satisfied."

"No," Anar smiled. "But you are occasionally wrong; it's Hawk."

"Then explain O'Brien."

Anar couldn't. Other than as having gotten in the way.

"I can," Pfrann assured. "Garak's tool. A bastard from the old wars. He killed her; Janice. The Human tramp of the Cardassian Dukat. Anon saw the interest in Bashir's eyes looking at Janice. I saw the hate in O'Brien's looking at us. Bashir made Janice laugh. O'Brien made her apprehensive -- perhaps for Anon," he shrugged suddenly. "I don't know. I know she avoided eye contact. Cardassians avoid eye contact because we are lying. As we make it to challenge; that's what the Humans say. Who knows why the Humans do anything."

"You make eye contact also just to talk," Anar replied slowly. "I have never known Janice to be apprehensive of anyone."

"Not even Garak," Pfrann nodded sourly.

"As it must be my age that finds such worldliness in someone as young as you are to be disturbing."

Pfrann shrugged again. "I'm seventeen." He moved away to lend his strength and assistance to his brother; Anon would need it. Deciphering Sisko's signal to the UFP placed Janice in the operating theater. An early suspect in custody and awaiting questioning; Chief O'Brien. The conference was canceled.

"No!" Panicked, enraged, Anon lunged for the door.

A sharp, swift strike from Tan brought him sharply down on his knees where he gagged on the nausea filling up inside of him and the convulsion of tears threatening to drown him. The phaser rifle in Tan's hand was fixed on Anar and Sian, daring them to move in the direction of Anon or the door. Pfrann, Tan allowed to attend to his brother warning the child's outraged curses with a thunderous "Silence!"

"Guardian, Anar," Anar repeated three times to himself, his eyes as fixed on Tan's phaser rifle fixed on him before calling out into the silent air for the child Ziyal. "Understand, child, I cannot help them if I cannot help them."

There was no answer, just a strange and inexplicable sensation of calmness floating down over him that he didn't begin to feel in his heart. 

"Who are you talking to?" Sian was not alone in his question.

"No one apparently," Anar agreed with a reassuring nod for Tan. "We've come this far in our mutual trust of each other, shall we turn our backs now?"

"You hit your head in your fall for freedom," Tan lowered his rifle with a chuckle, explaining to his satisfaction the Bajoran's strange cry out for some child; Prophet or spirit, no doubt.

"It's entirely possible I did," Anar admitted. "If not entirely possible I struck it once too often and once too hard quite some time ago…" he approached Anon with the offer of a hand up and a shake of his head. "Tan's right. You can't, no more than I can."

"I would think you would be maddened…" Anon stared coldly at the door, spoke harshly through his clenched teeth.

"To the point of insanity," Anar agreed.

"Yes!" Anon said, both of his fists clenched tightly to his stomach in the agony of emotion, not the agony of pain. "Like me! Exactly like me!"

"I am," Anar promised. "As I will have their throats; Shakaar's included. Whose I remain unwilling to risk is Janice's. Yours -- and yours," a faint trace of a smile found its way over to Pfrann; his father's soul, so desperately in love with his father's heart, that right now was breaking.

"What you talk, we do," Pfrann's thin lips twisted cruelly in reply.

"No, I don't talk," Anar assured. "What I do, and have done among so many other things, is aid and abet in the destruction of my brother's soul. Misinterpreting the ferocity he exhibited as a child as an uncommon strength. The fact that he would one day return to harm those I love, should surprise no one; myself, least of all. I'm not quite sure what else I would have expected him to do…and, no," his smile spread a little fuller with the confounded expression on the child's face, "you don't have to understand everything I'm saying. Anon takes good care of that, as well as good care of you. The only part you have to understand is about rash actions doing both Janice and Anon a far greater harm than good."

"Then what do we do?" Pfrann insisted in the impatience of his youth.

Anar would have to think about that for all his advancing years and the wisdom that was supposed to accompany them.

"His reasoning is sound," Sian expressed a plausible belief in Pfrann's analogy of where the blame may actually lay as Pfrann resumed the task of assisting Anon in monitoring communication channels alongside Tan.

"Actually I was thinking," Anar replied distantly, "how upright the mother must be in her soundness of mind and being to begin to dilute the madness of Dukat and have her sons grow to be functional; which they are."

Sian was silent; Anar couldn't say as he blamed him. He smiled tenderly that time for his son. "I didn't strike my head. The vision of their sister Ziyal has plagued me since shortly after we arrived; here aboard Terok Nor, as well as aboard the Tir. I am uncertain as to why. As it is possible I may never fully understand. In the meantime, if there is a flaw to Pfrann's reasoning, it is only in believing the snake is Garak rather than Hawk. Get into the Infirmary somehow, if not, into the ranks of security."

"You think Hawk is still here."

No. Anar was certain more than before Hawk was on that shuttle and on his way home. He stared at his phaser rifle set to the side. If he had the means he would destroy the shuttle; damn the hundred innocent souls aboard. Whose plan was not flawed by anyone's standards was the Prophets. "Hawk has left and there are no markers I can think of to call in who would swarm to avenge the sons of Dukat; we are alone." 

"Then what is the point of risking discovery when we will know soon enough without having to infiltrate -- don't misunderstand me. My rage and grief is as all encompassing as yours."

"The point is Anon's peace of mind and also ours," Anar activated his field unit. "Beyond that the knowledge Sisko may have of Janice, the colony, and just where those pictures may be -- good luck," he wished his son's image fading away. He turned around to Tan's chuckle.

"A hologram?"

Anar winked back with a humor and calmness he continued not to feel. "You know of an easier way to penetrate Sisko's shields and be in more than one place at a time? I'm still nursing the bruises from my last encounter with the Federation. This way I can not only heal, I can work at assisting you -- as I can attempt as we speak to signal Shakaar from the bridge of the Tir. He may ignore the hail or answer it. As he may heed the instructions to intercept the shuttle or he may refuse. I can try until I fail, in other words. But at least I am not sitting idly by." 

Sisko issued the order to Dax to signal the UFP with what little information they had at the moment upon entering Lange's quarters.

"Reality," Odo offered what impressed itself upon the Captain.

"Indeed, Constable," Sisko stepped for the console. Reality was much more than the scattered articles of clothing and intoxicating aroma of spilled whiskey.

"Can't smell," Odo reminded. "Bottle's over there…Lange was over there. The Chief…well…he ended up over there. Not quite sure where he started out."

"Here, Constable," Sisko assured. That was the reality he couldn't shake or deny. A direct violation, not only of conference protocol, but also his orders. "Unacceptable. Damn the reasons."

"Apparently." What Odo could do was hear. And the word he heard Sisko use to describe O'Brien in his orders to Dax was suspect; Lange remained a victim.

"To be treated as such, Constable," Sisko insisted. "No excuses, none."

"You said that," Odo nodded.

He would say it again. Until he made sense of what happened in here. "I can't imagine…" Sisko looked around at what he couldn't help but imagine.

"Yes, well," Odo offered, "Major Kira's probably quite capable of conducting the analyses -- under supervision of Commanders Dax or Worf -- "

"Under supervision of yourself," Sisko corrected. "I'll not walk in blind, Constable. I will know precisely what I am talking about, and the Chief will answer to my satisfaction."

"Or he'll hang," Odo agreed as the Captain left to wait in the Infirmary for Bashir. "Damn the UFP…Interesting your trust in my objectivity." He ogled Worf. "I'd still pick you or Dax over me. Something to do with your honor code, her seven lifetimes of wisdom, and my having seen just about all there is to see six years with the Federation and ten years with Dukat. Humanoids are as cruel and vicious with themselves and their own never mind anyone else, regardless of the species."

"I am warned," Worf replied. "If I suspect your treatment or disregard of evidence as bias, I will let you know."

"Good," Odo approved. "Because it's also something to do with personally liking Lange. Not that I don't like the Chief; I believe I do. I just know a victim when I see one. As I know a viable suspect when I -- well, hear of one, actually," he grunted. "As far as seeing, O'Brien wouldn't be the first one find himself in a position he had little or anything to do with personally, appearances aside."

"I can tell you now this is not the work of any Klingon," Worf submitted, subjectively, that was true.

"Nor any Cardassian," Odo nodded. "Agree with that myself. There's too much left intact; including Lange. Dead or not, the body was still recognizable as a body, if not generally recognizable as Lange. That leaves the Chief and two hundred and seventy-five Special Forces as the prime suspects. Bashir's analyses will likely tell us which; if not possibly who. On that note, probably should get started seeing what we can do about supporting or disputing him."

"She's alive," Bashir surely doubted if anyone would want to dispute that when he joined Sisko waiting with Kira in the privacy of his office in the Infirmary.

"That's good news, yes, Doctor," Sisko agreed quietly from where he sat at his station behind Bashir's desk. Kira looked away, towards one of the walls, no where else in particular, thinking no doubt about Bareil.

"Extraordinary news, actually," Bashir sat down on the wrong side of his desk, not troubling the Captain with asking him to relinquish his chair. A mildly nervous shake to Bashir's hand, a far-away look in his eyes, his brain racing to assimilate the staggering amount of data and organize it into coherent thoughts and speech; the Captain was no exception to the stress of the emotions running rampant through them all. A scattered number of data padds on the desk suggested some early preliminary reports of Odo's investigation, and possibly some initial definitive ones of Dax. Bashir held two padds in his hand as well, both having to do with Janice Lange.

"And, well, where do I begin?" Bashir agreed with a clearing of his throat. "Possibly with defining what I mean by alive -- and by alive, I mean Janice is alive. Viably alive," he nodded to Kira releasing the wall to gaze fixed and unemotional at him. "Vibrant, if you prefer. The reconstruction of her larynx has been utterly successful…the cervical fracture is stable and fused. She'll have somewhat of a stiff neck for the next several weeks, but then while there was no actual damage to the spinal cord, there was significant irritation. I've implanted two neural transducers to insure the transmission of nerve impulses to her extremities remain uninterrupted and smooth while allowing the spinal cord time to rest. She will require some intensive physical therapy to maintain and regain her optimum physical strength throughout her convalescence and afterwards. As there may be some minor, residual weakness which may preclude her participation in endurance events. I'm unfamiliar with Janice's actual schedule of physical activity --if she has an actual organized schedule apart from her general life style, not excluding the physical requirements of archeology. By my examination, I would say no, she hasn't. Her muscle density and development is uniform. Leading me to the conclusion Janice is young, healthy in her life style, and therefore strong…which, yes, brings us to the hypothalamus and cerebral cortex region of Janice's brain," he looked away briefly for a moment.

"Clinically Janice was dead approximately forty minutes -- I hate that word, don't you? Clinically? It's ambiguous, and so grossly inaccurate to say the least. Nevertheless, in a very general explanation, the cerebral cortex in a Human can be divided into three primary groups of functions; motor, sensory and association -- association being things like intuition, intelligence, memory, personality. Together with the hypothalamus which governs much of a Human's emotional responses, damage in these regions can have significant repercussions…" he was focused on Kira transfixed on him. "Not that damage to other areas can't; of course they can."

"She's brain dead," Kira read between the lines; inaccurately thank God.

"Hardly," the hint of Bashir's smile was fragile. "Another stock phrase I positively loathe. If Janice were brain dead, she would be dead. Which she isn't. As neither is she mindless. What she very likely is, or will be, is average -- possibly slightly above or below. All of this is highly subjective at the moment, of course; remaining to be seen. As naturally, it's not that brain cells don't regenerate, of course they do. As they can be stimulated to generate or regenerate; I'm certainly evidence of that -- as it might be something you may want to ask the UFP," he proposed to Sisko. "Even if there is no ultimate decision to pursue genetic re-enhancement in this instance. No less risky or controversial, I'm certain, than actual enhancement, the horror of this story is, Janice was hardly average. So astoundingly above average, into the realm of utter physical superiority, with three times the number of primary brain cells one normally expects to find in a Human."

"Are you saying Doctor Lange was a genetically enhanced Human, as in the express instance of yourself?" Sisko questioned.

"Hardly," Bashir assured. "I see no evidence of it. To the contrary, I'm saying by Nature Janice is, or was, a superior Human. And that is not only humbling, it is so far beyond upsetting given the circumstances, I can't even think of a word to describe it, nor how I feel personally about it at the moment. That sort of intelligence is fragile. Proven to be so utterly fragile by the genetic enhancement experiments of the 20th and 21st centuries, to where it truly is a flip of a coin if one is going to end up with a hopelessly maddened Kahn, or simply a brilliant and arrogant me. Indeed, the early and long-term, if not constant, mental programming and conditioning practices of the Romulan and Cardassian races further support the astounding risks of creating little more than emotional and mental Frankensteins, irregardless of the species -- "

"Yes, Doctor," Sisko waved, not impatiently in response to Bashir's increasingly, heaving breath. "We are discussing Doctor Lange."

"So we are," Bashir took a deep breath in an effort to relax. "And it would be something far more than a medical miracle to expect no irreparable change in a brain that has been starved of oxygen for forty minutes; modern medical science aside. The intricacies of associative brain functions are precisely that; intricate. Memory, a key factor in one's ability to retain information. As has short-term memory been proven countless times to be the most fragile of all. I doubt very much, in other words, if Janice will be much, if any assistance, in relaying how and what happened, obviously to her. I'm far less concerned with, or upset by that inconvenience, than I am by the equally probable fact who is dead, is Doctor Lange. Who isn't dead, is Janice." He stood up. "I'd like a short time to review my own analyses. As I would naturally like some time to review whatever forensic evidence -- Odo?" he reached for one of the conspicuous padds of information waiting to be read. "Has managed to compile?"

"Constable Odo, yes, Doctor," Sisko nodded as quietly as he had been since Bashir first walked in. "He and Mister Worf are conducting the last of the physical examination of Doctor Lange's quarters."

"I'll want to read it," Bashir reiterated, well within his authority to ask and expect to be granted the opportunity. "As I'll want to review Dax's and Michelle's preliminary evaluations of the Chief -- where is Miles? Michelle said something about security."

"Security isolation for the time being, yes, Doctor," Sisko agreed. "Recommended, together with the assurance of Commander Dax such action would pose no threat to the accuracy of any analyses, forensic or otherwise."

"Well, Dax is certainly a scientist herself of the highest caliber. I have no difficulty respecting or accepting her judgment."

"Neither do I, Doctor," Sisko assured.

"Though I retain the right to conduct any additional examination of Miles, or analyses of my own."

"Of course," Sisko granted.

"As I request permission to obtain a second, expert opinion regarding all forensic determinations, including my own. To that end, who comes immediately to mind is Doctor Tracy Sorge. An expert certainly in the field of forensic sciences; he taught half of us for God's sake."

"Permission granted," Sisko agreed.

"As," Bashir took another desperately needed deep breath, "I would like to obtain a recommendation for an expert in the field of counseling. Specifically someone who is skilled in the areas of post-traumatic stress and the psychological impact of sexual assault. Lower on the list of Janice's numerous injuries is that of a particularly brutal forced sexual encounter. Not that all such encounters aren't brutal, of course they are. And this one was certainly brutal; particularly. I'm not sure if you were aware of that, if you weren't, you certainly are now."

"I was aware, yes, Doctor," Sisko agreed, "the probable nature of Doctor Lange's assault was an early and likely determination, together with the attempt at strangulation."

"Definitive nature," Bashir assured. "And what I mean to say in regards to that is Janice is Human. Not that means anything really other than Humans, as with all other species, have specific acceptable or unacceptable rules of conduct…As that is not to say no Human has ever found themselves to be the victim of someone else's acceptable versus our unacceptable conduct; of course we have. As we certainly have as a race strayed beyond our own code of ethics."

"With deadly and dangerous results, yes, Doctor," Sisko upheld the acceptable morality of his species.

"Precisely," Bashir said. "As with all other instances of Janice's retained or lost memory, what she doesn't remember consciously, in no way determines what she will retain subconsciously. In turn the cause and effect such retention would, could, or will have on her emotional responses, together with the damage to her hypothalamus; your guess is as good as mine. For now. Until we see. Subjectively, in the instance of pure, limited observation, Janice, while she may have been assertive in some respects, was hardly aggressive. Will she suddenly become aggressive? I doubt it. I'm far more concerned that what she doesn't become is severely withdrawn. No more than I would consider consenting to anyone other than myself acting as Janice's medical caretaker, would I presume to promote myself as qualified to undertake the role of counselor. To the contrary, I discourage myself from even attempting on the basis it would be highly inappropriate given the circumstances; Miles is a friend of mine. Therefore, if you have no objections, I'd like permission to fully explain the situation in its entirety to Doctors Sorge. Rebecca Sorge is a counselor. Retired herself from practice, she may have a recommendation as far as who may constitute 'the best' the UFP has to offer."

"I have no objections, Doctor," Sisko assured, "to your intent to extend Doctor Lange the best of any necessary medical or psychological treatment or care."

"Thank you," Bashir turned to leave. "It is after all, the least we can do."

"The very least, Doctor," Sisko preempted his exit. "To that end, I do have a question or two."

"Of course," Bashir turned back. "What I can tell you -- what I'm willing to tell you at this point is Janice's assailant was not Cardassian or Klingon. Lacking any hint of either such DNA evidence aside, the ferocity in which Janice was attacked and beaten would have found her quite literally torn limb from limb."

"I respect that determination. I am however, much more interested in the DNA evidence you have found, rather in what you have not."

"A chemically distorted version of Human; remarkably so for any number of reasons why. I'll have to do a complete chemical analysis before I can begin to tell you why."

"I'll take an educated guess for now, Doctor," Sisko moistened his dry lips.

"Alcohol or any number of related narcotics or drugs; not excluding the presence of high levels of ryetalyn in Janice's blood stream. Some method of external introduction. Some acute and immediate allergic reaction that sought to repel and destroy the invader; it's not unheard of. As a matter of fact it stands as the reason behind any number of infertility complaints."

"You're avoiding my question, Doctor," Sisko nodded.

"Only to the extent that I'm avoiding accusing Miles of being the only plausible and possible suspect until all of the facts are in; and even then, yes, likely I will continue having difficulty believing any of this."

"You're not alone," Sisko assured. "Please, by all means, review your analyses and all others as many times as you like. Obtaining a second opinion from whomever you like; as I will nevertheless require a determination from you within a reasonable length of time…As I will require both you and Commander Dax to speak with Odo concerning this issue of alcohol."

"Yes," Bashir nodded. "Along with Garak and Quark. I can tell you now in short what transpired from my perspective. We were in Quark's; the four of us. Dax, Garak, the Chief and myself. Miles was drinking Bajoran ale. Quark's tabulation can certainly tell you how much the Chief actually had. During the course of time we were actually together, roughly twenty minutes, he had two, in rapid succession to each other…"

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

"And, yes," Bashir quite uncomfortably elaborated on to Odo, sitting with him in the confines of a convenient and vacant security cell, being as the reconstruction of the Chief Constable's office was, to date, less than half completed -- who in their right mind would expect it to be completed so quickly? As who in their right mind would deem it in its present state to be an appropriate arena to carry on such a pertinent and private line of questioning?

"Certainly not I," Bashir pushed back his hair, nodding around the cell with about as much discomfort as he would expect to have if he were the one under arrest rather than the Chief. "But, yes, I suppose if you insist on hearing everything, subjective or otherwise, he was in, or appeared to be in a foul mood. Stating something along the lines of that himself. And so, no, it isn't entirely subjective, I suppose…"

"Hm," Odo grunted, making all sorts of unnecessary notions on his data padd when he very well could have quite easily instead recorded the whole damn conversation, playing it back to his heart's content; on through the damn night if he felt so inclined. "You keep saying he…"

"Well, of course, I keep saying he," Bashir agreed rather brusquely. "And by he who I naturally mean is the Chief -- who else in God's name would I mean?"

"Just checking," Odo grunted. "Clarification, that sort of thing."

"Clarification for a moron, perhaps," Bashir tossed back his head that time with an accompanying nervous flutter of his hand. "You're asking me about the Chief; I'm answering you about the Chief -- who, yes, just also happens to be my best friend."

"Second only to Garak," Odo grunted. "Want a drink of water?"

"No, Garak isn't my best friend," Bashir groaned. "Garak is a friend, yes, of course he is. Someone to enjoy lunch with -- why, in God's name would I want a drink of water?"

"Sometimes they want one," Odo shrugged. "Nothing more esoteric than that."

"Who are they?" Bashir requested. "You're bloody ambiguous yourself, if you care to know the truth."

Odo looked at him. Bashir nodded. "Excuse the vulgar speech."

"You're excused," Odo assured. "And, yes, I do care to know the truth. The whole truth."

"And nothing but the truth," Bashir sighed. "Yes, all right. I suppose in fairness to Miles, I certainly didn't help with his mood -- if he was in a mood. To the contrary, I did my best to aggravate him. I may have told you that -- or I may have told the Captain. I'm sure if I haven't, I'm telling you now, as Dax will likely tell the two of you as well. The reason being, my reason, I was fairly aggravated myself. Have been aggravated with the Chief's clear obsessing with Janice -- I say obsessing now, where I have refrained from saying obsessing before, because I truly believe he was obsessing…

"Yes, I truly do believe that," he stared quietly into space. "As I truly feel, have felt, quite uncomfortable with the whole of the Chief's manner for the last three days and certainly this afternoon in Quark's. He was loud; quite loud. Quite close to truly vulgar; certainly defiant, and, yes, as I said, I contributed to it. I antagonized him. Quite willfully and maliciously -- the point however, that I may have actually inspired him to promptly go out and rape and beat some woman, no I wouldn't want to think that."

"That would be pushing it," Odo grunted.

"Yes, it certainly would be," Bashir agreed. "In the meantime I would also far prefer to find myself innocent in encouraging or inspiring him in his pursuit of Janice in any way. Surely the entire nonsense about a message from Janice inviting him to her quarters was utter nonsense, as it was quite obviously planned in advance; long before I came on the scene to aggravate him."

"Planned either by the Chief or some fellow in engineering," Odo read back over his notes.

"Precisely," Bashir nodded. "As I believe I have said I was extraordinarily disturbed by the Chief's decision to actually leave -- he claimed for Janice's quarters. Disturbed to the point that I quite frankly did not know what to do…In all honesty," he sighed, "I was hoping Dax would take the responsibility away from me in deciding to do anything, or something about the Chief's rather sudden departure -- she didn't. Or she did nothing, I should clarify. But then she was angry; as annoyed with me as she was with Miles. As it's entirely possible Jadzia didn't take Miles as seriously as I took him; and I did take him seriously -- yes, I certainly did," he stared dully out past the framework of the cell into the silent and vacant corridor. "When can I see Miles?"

"When he's coherent enough to do more than slobber over himself and others -- why?" Odo asked.

"Well, why is I am a doctor, not merely a friend. As I have permission from Captain Sisko to conduct any analysis or examination I deem appropriate and necessary; as by right I should have such permission without having to ask for it twice."

"If I follow your drift," Odo nodded.

"Yes, well, I doubt if my drift is really all that difficult to follow," Bashir smiled sourly. "I'm upset. Struggling with my own feelings of guilt of having contributed to the outcome; and that would be by not acting when I should have acted; I should have stopped Miles. Damn wittering on about Jadzia feeling comfortable, uncomfortable, or annoyed. I was clearly uncomfortable and I should have done something other than laugh…"

"I wouldn't say laugh, exactly, Constable," Garak mulled over Odo's questions. His eyes as round and wondering as an owl's one moment, narrowed and darting as a hawk the next. "As may I say, I find it so extraordinarily interesting that you are asking me my opinion of Julian and Chief O'Brien's encounter in Quark's, rather than asking…for example," he smiled, "Julian and Chief O'Brien."

"Do you have anything to add?" Odo drawled.

"Not really, no," Garak shook his head after a continued moment or two of pensive thought. "Perhaps a lingering mild interest in why -- why the questions, of course," he said. "Has something happened? I suspected dinner was canceled for the convenience of everyone, rather than the inconvenience of someone -- such as the Chief? Did Chief O'Brien really disobey Captain Sisko's most strict and emphatic orders of no communication between opposing sides without appropriate supervision and/or chaperon? How astoundingly foolish of him. I have always found Chief O'Brien to be a most dutiful and obedient officer of the Federation; almost servile in his attitude."

"Are you through?" Odo asked.

"With what?" Garak beamed. "I've told you, Constable, three times, it must be, I agree with Julian's claim of a joke. I thought it was a joke; Doctor Lange's invitation to Chief O'Brien to join her in her quarters. What else, in the name of your gods or mine, could it be? Have been? Dare I pursue in asking what you mean? Surely you mean something? Are attempting to convey something?"

"What I'm attempting to extract is information," Odo assured. "Make that from you."

"By means of attempted seduction, no less, Constable," Garak cooed. "How delightfully Cardassian of you; Gul Dukat would be proud."

"By any means," Odo promised. "Out with it. What aren't you saying?"

"A great many things possibly, Constable," Garak acknowledged.

"Or nothing," Odo nodded. "It's all right. If a night or two in security won't refresh your memory, perhaps the UFP inquiry will."

"The UFP," Garak repeated. "Why would the UFP begin to have an interest in me, or anything I may or may not have to say?"

"That's up to them. Let's try it again. Do you, or don't you have anything of consequence to add or subtract from Bashir's account of dinner at Quark's?"

"Dessert, Constable," Garak corrected pensively. "The Chief was already seated when I arrived -- I recall that. As I recall thinking of how the conference must have ended somewhat earlier than the session Monday."

"1700," Odo verified. "Quark's didn't reopen until 18."

"Julian and I were there at 1710," Garak smiled at the attempt to entrap him. "Commander Dax and the Chief had arrived a reasonable time before that. All total I would have to say I was with the Chief perhaps forty-five or fifty minutes."

"During and throughout which the Chief was drinking -- Bashir claims no more than twenty-five minutes."

"Bajoran ale, yes. And Julian is a hardly someone I would recommend you set your chronometer by, Constable. "

"How many?"

"Four or five; Quark can certainly tell you exactly."

"Never mind Quark, when was the note from Doctor Lange presented?"

"Reputed note," Garak continued to smile. "And not five minutes before the Chief actually left -- really, Constable, not to berate a point, but I would think insofar as any questions you have regarding Doctor Lange's invitation you could easily resolve by asking her."

"Easier said than done," Odo assured.

Garak had no idea what he meant. "Easier said than done," he dampened his already moist lips with a sip from his glass of water. "Whatever could you possibly mean?"

"Back to this concept of a joke," Odo encouraged.

"It was a joke," Garak insisted again he believed the same as Julian. "As again, surely, the one person to ask beyond Doctor Lange is the Bajoran security officer who presented Chief O'Brien with the message, just from whom he received the message."

"Also easier said than done," Odo assured.

"Due to sheer number," Garak understood. "As is process of elimination your best avenue of approach -- following asking the question of your security force, of course."

"It's been asked," Odo nodded. "If he's of my security force, I'm sure I'll get an answer."

"Simply one you may not necessarily like," Garak smiled. "I can only say in closing, in my opinion, Julian exaggerates in some respects, while he doesn't exaggerate in some others."

"That's certainly ambiguous enough," Odo grunted.

"If not utterly vague," Garak gloated. "My specialty, Constable, as you are well aware…As I'm certain, to where Doctor Lange may have been surprised by the Chief's unexpected visit, I suspect who is actually angry is…Major Kira?" his eyes twinkled with delight. "Of course she is. Commander Dax alluded to as much in her disclosure Major Kira and Doctor Lange were expecting to be together in conference. Is that what happened? Did Chief O'Brien blunder his way into Doctor Lange's quarters only to find himself face to face with Major Kira's wrath?"

"One," Quark's finger pressed its way onto Odo's padd, "I didn't do it.

"Two," he nodded, "I didn't do it. Three, I did not do it. And last, but not least, four, whatever it is, I did not do it. Can I go now? Something you may not understand, and since tonight's party has been apparently canceled for reasons which remain unknown, which is fine with me, I've got a couple of hundred hungry mouths to feed, and a couple hundred more thirsty throats to quench -- what? You think a little death and destruction is going to keep the crowd away? Guess again. I'm swamped. As in buried. Look, what if I confess to every unsolved crime for the last six months? Will that make it easier on you? And also me? I'm talking. I hear myself talking. And, you know, but the funny thing about talking, it helps to occasionally get some feedback."

"How many beers did Chief O'Brien have?"

Quark digested that. He digested it and then he regurgitated it. "Five. How many does someone think he had?"

"Who delivered the message from Doctor Lange?"

"A guy with a Bajoran snout dressed in a Bajoran security suit. Why? Who does someone think delivered the message?"

"Yes, well, who's someone?"

"Hey," Quark shrugged. "You keep me in suspense, I'll keep you. What's fair is fair -- who do you _think_ someone is?"

"Major Kira," Odo said.

Quark sneered. "You have another maniac walking around here in a suit of armor I don't know about?"

Odo looked at him. Quark nodded. "I'm talking about resident maniac -- _our_ resident maniac now that you know who is he doesn't know where. What'd she do? Rip O'Brien's lungs out and hand them to him? Tear his head off before or after she crammed the padd down his throat -- I'm sure it didn't matter either way. She got her point across. Trust me, she got her point across. She always does -- painfully, I might add. If it wasn't for the fact that he's a he and she's a she it would be difficult to tell the two of them apart -- it is difficult. Strike that. It's difficult. Seven feet tall and green all over has got nothing, repeat, _nothing_, on what's five feet nothing with shaved red hair."

"Yes, well…" Odo said.

"Okay so he's not seven feet tall; he'd like to be. Who wouldn't? He's got the same problem a lot of us have."

"What problem's that?"

"Who knows. Not me; ask Bashir. I'm talking about Dukat. Gul Dukat. Yours, mine and our Dukat. Who do you think I'm talking about? What do you think I'm talking about? What am I talking about?" Quark admitted. "Is probably a better question."

"Yes, well, what I'm talking about…" Odo nodded.

"I've got what you're talking about," Quark assured. "So what if the Chief had a few beers? So what if he wrote himself a note? So what if he went to Lange's place to have more than his plans rearranged by Major Kira? This has never happened to anyone before? This is going to make the station stop spinning on its axis? The worm hole open and not close? If so, give me a call. I'll be in my bar until someone shoots the place to pieces again -- I have to get a better life," he shook his head. "I have got to get a better life. I keep saying this, and one of these days I'm going to listen."

"Well, what do you know?" Odo asked Dax.

She smiled. Her first honest one in a few hours. Even talking to Kira she was hesitant and insecure in her stand, uncertain insofar as what she was actually thinking.

Odo nodded. "For all the claiming to be shocked…"

"I think it's more that it's the Chief," Dax agreed.

"Nature of the assault," Odo supposed to an extent. 

"I know Benjamin is truly shocked," Dax assured, reassured to an extent.

"As he knows it doesn't look good," Odo handed her Worf's independent comparison analysis that arrived at basically the same conclusion as his.

"No, it doesn't," Dax accepted the padd.

"Bashir's convoluted chemical screening aside."

"Actually there is something to that," Dax held out hope. Highest of all, Julian would come up with an answer. An explanation beyond the high levels of alcohol.

"Memories are dim," Odo vaguely recalled the taste of the stuff; if one could recall taste.

"Depends," Dax said. "And even then, while you may have been solid for a few months, you weren't ever Human."

"No more than Bajoran Ale is Klingon Blood Wine," Odo nodded. "Or in this case, no more than Bajoran Ale and Irish whiskey are Klingon Blood Wine…Think Bashir's leaving himself open for one of his lectures about regardless of the species, the effect of stimulants or depressants has much to do with the amount consumed -- "

"Within a specified time frame. Which in this case is relatively short," Dax was well aware. "Actually, with respect to Humans it also has much to do with the time of day."

"Not excluding the fact they have only one liver -- That figures," Odo snorted. "Beginning to see where it probably wouldn't hurt if I got a degree or two in something, if I plan on spending too much more time around here."

"We like you just the way you are," Dax promised.

"Until I get it into my head to rape and murder some innocent bystander," Odo could be as cold as anyone or any species could be; and he wanted to be. "Then we'll see."

"She was innocent, wasn't she." Dax read through Worf's report that refrained from drawing any conclusion beyond the cold, hard, engineering and investigative facts.

"Was, is, and we're not talking about Cardassians or Klingons," Odo assured.

"No," Dax agreed.

"Nor Bajorans," Odo indicated the padd. "Federation Special Forces had been there fifteen minutes. By Bashir's report Lange was dead already for at least ten."

"Random guard change," Dax nodded. "Yes."

"Yes," Odo said. "Figured if our infiltrators could do it, why couldn't I? With a chance perhaps of throwing a quirk into their works -- whatever that might be. Special Forces prior to the change were yes, Bajoran. And they've been talked to; are being talked to," his finger tapped on the padd. "All emphatic the Chief never entered the corridor at any time."

"Transporter trace particles, yes," Dax was reading. "Why would the Chief transport?"

"Other than he knew he'd never get onto that corridor? Passed those guards? Bajoran or otherwise."

"It's involved," Dax set the padd down.

"Premeditated is the word. Perhaps not the actual assault."

"They were vying with each other," Dax strayed back to 1735 and Quark's. "Sparring. They have been. You know that."

"I know to the extent I believe you knew," Odo forewent requiring clarification of who was sparring.

"It was…" Dax lingered over choosing her words. "A little more intense than previous conversations."

"Who was more intense?" He had no choice there about asking.

"The Chief?" Julian was Julian now that Dax thought back. Mildly troubled perhaps by the Chief and yet still compounding the situation.

"And when O'Brien left?"

"I really could only explain it if Kira had instructed Lange to include the Chief in their discussion."

Odo nodded. "Other than as a joke. In that case the Chief would have been leaving for engineering, rather than Lange's as claimed."

"Well, a joke perhaps that the Chief really would have thought Julian -- or anyone," Dax paused. "Would have believed him. No, I didn't believe him. It's possible Julian may have. Not about Lange. But about his interest in Lange."

"Come again?" O'Brien sat up on the edge of the bench with a bleary-eyed look over the three of them; Sisko, Odo and Bashir standing in this splayed half-circle in front of him. "Quark's? What do I know about Quark's? I'm still trying to figure out…" his head hung a little heavy off his neck as it moved away from them around the security cell, down to the bench and short-sleeved orange jumpsuit he wore. "Where am I?"

"Security, Chief," Bashir crouched down, a tricorder in hand.

"Security?" O'Brien repeated.

"Yes, Chief," Sisko answered from above his head. "Doctor?"

"Perhaps just a little disoriented still," Bashir nodded.

"Disoriented?" O'Brien snorted a familiar chuckle with a reach for him. "I'm three sheets to the wind. Where did you get your license -- " he stopped when his hand touched Bashir's wrist. Feeling the fragile bones, seeing the crumbled figure on the floor as the room swam out of focus around him.

"What?" Bashir asked, reading the sudden accelerated heart rate.

"Oh, Jesus Christ!" the Chief was up and stopped by the force field guarding the door, not someone's footsteps. He remembered a hand also, maybe? Reaching out? The figure coming toward him was red; it was Kira. And then it was all blue again; this sky blue color surrounding him.

"Security," Odo nodded calmly with a noted aside to Bashir. "Too bad that thing can't read minds."

"Quite," Bashir's eyes and expression were troubled. The Captain's, rigid and set watching the Chief clearly irate, clearly upset, spewing some choice obscenities as he denounced Quark's. Knowing anything about Quark's, needing to know anything about Quark's in lieu of Lange.

"What about Lange?" Odo was bland and deadpan as always.

"I just told you!" O'Brien shouted, feeling his jaw crack as his mouth opened a little too wide for comfort. He stopped again; annoyed. "What the hell did she do? Fracture my jaw?"

"A minor dislocation, actually -- " Bashir took a step forward.

"Hello!" O'Brien exploded with a bellow. "The woman's lying dead on the floor -- oh, Jesus!" his step forward and abrupt step backwards ended with his hand covering his face as it suddenly all came together; everything. The security cell. The jumpsuit. The three expressionless faces waiting for him. "You think I did this? Wait a minute, let me get this straight…you think that I did this…I walked in for Christ's sake! I just walked in!"

"Transported, actually," Odo said. "But that's all right. Continue."

"Transported?" O'Brien's face contorted.

"Yes, Chief," Sisko was the closest one to him. "What happened after you transported?"

"I didn't transport!" O'Brien's hand moved wildly up and down in the direction of Bashir. "I gave the guy the padd!"

"Me?" Bashir said. "No, Chief. The padd you gave me was in Quark's."

"Not Quark's," O'Brien groaned. "Forget about Quark's. I'm talking about…you know who I'm talking about! Security! Ask him! Them! I-gave-the-guy-the- padd," he stressed deliberately and slowly. "He let me in! What? Is he telling you he didn't let me in? Wrong!"

"Well, certainly right that security is saying that," Bashir looked at Odo.

"And they're lying!" O'Brien half-veered, half-lurched his way back to the bench. "Excuse me, I have to sit down…I have got to sit down…" he sat there trying to massage some sense back into all of this; back into his _brain_. Some life and sensation back into his face feeling dry and tight.

"Yes, well, they're not lying," Odo grunted. "No more than Bashir is lying when he places Lange's death at 2135."

"Which Janice isn't dead," Bashir added quickly for the Chief's benefit; certainly no one else's, particularly Lange.

"No, but she was," Odo assured. "With ample evidence of it, and the repercussions from it -- therefore," he took a step or two forward, "before we continue, under Federation law, I'm obligated to inform you, you have a right to remain silent. Understanding anything you do say, can, and will be held against you in a court of law…"

"Come again?" O'Brien said.

"Attempted murder in the first degree, yes, Chief," Sisko replied quietly, "is a charge pending -- "

"Criminal charge pending," Odo assured. "Together with physical violative assault in the first; rape, I believe is your colloquial term for it. Captain Sisko will take care of informing you of any and all other charges, pending or otherwise. In the meantime, where was I..? Oh, yes. You have a right to seek counsel from an appointed UFP attorney together with any counsel you may choose to seek from your Commanding Officer, Captain Sisko. If you waive either of these rights -- "

"Of course I waive them!" O'Brien insisted. "What is this?"

"Serious, Chief," Sisko cautioned. "Quite serious."

"But I didn't do anything! Okay, so I went there. I'm telling you I went there -- " his wave ended at Sisko. "I'm admitting I went there," he finished a little quieter, not that it mattered; not that it helped. "Oh, crap."

"Insubordination, Chief," Sisko's nod came down. "Willful disobedience of orders…"

"Yeah, yeah. To name a few," O'Brien's glazed stare shuffled between his hands in his lap and the bare wall to his right. "Okay, so I'll be cleaning out the solid waste disposals, and Rom will be the new Chief Engineer."

Sisko's jaw tightened. "A great deal more serious than that, Chief."

O'Brien didn't see how it could be. "But we'll iron it out, right? We'll figure it out."

"Oh, quite," Bashir eagerly put in. "Certainly we shall. I've issued a transmission to Bajor for a second opinion of all forensic data; Doctor Tracy Sorge…"

"_Forensic_ data?" O'Brien looked to Sisko. "Should I pretend not to know what that means?"

"That would be rather worthless, yes, Chief," Sisko's nod moved stiffly again. "Doctor Bashir's DNA analyses are a positive match for both you and Doctor Lange."

"Perfect, no less," O'Brien scoffed. "Well, you know that's wrong. It is wrong."

Odo grunted. "If it's wrong, it's wrong in more than one area -- Lange's quarters," he qualified for the incensed glare. "Not only her person and clothes, as well as your own."

"Can you explain it, Chief?" Sisko had one pressing question on his mind.

"Oh, yeah." About as well as he could explain anything else. "No, I can't explain it. I went to her quarters. She was on the floor…I don't know. I remember standing there…" he watched himself getting up, actually, moving in slow motion across the floor towards the twisted body he could see. He closed his eyes. "Oh, yeah, she was dead. Definitely she was dead. She had…I don't know. Some sort of scarf wrapped around her neck. Couldn't figure out why." And before he could, Kira was there and he was seeing blue skies and bright stars swirling overhead.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

"Chief O'Brien's account differs by several hours, Captain," Admiral Kawasaki mentioned on screen from the UFP for the second time since the conference began; just three days.

"Leaves several hours unaccounted for, yes, Admiral," Sisko's hands uncrossed from their pyramid formation as he sat up straighter in his chair behind his desk in his office on Ops. 

"As does the Federation Assembly find your decision to cancel the conference perhaps somewhat premature," the Admiral glanced down at her notes. "Legate Damar may choose to continue. As First Minister Shakaar of Bajor may choose to install a replacement for Doctor Lange; it is assumed you will serve as interim Consular Representative for the Federation in this event."

"You jest, surely," Sisko's whisper passed over his lips; she glanced up. He offered a slight nod. "You were saying, Admiral?"

"By your report, First Minister Shakaar has not yet been informed of the situation with his representative Doctor Lange."

"No," Sisko shook his head slowly. "With all due respect to First Minister Shakaar -- "

"You continue to suspect a Bajoran based Maquis faction as being responsible."

He stared at her. She stared back. "As by your report Legate Damar remains uninformed of this security breech."

"Legate Damar…" Sisko began; he stopped. "I can see no reason, Admiral, to bring any undue attention to this matter. And, yes, that includes apprising Legate Damar of any situation that has little, if anything, to do with him."

"He is not a suspect."

"No," Sisko assured. "Nor any member of the Cardassian delegation."

She nodded. "A point the Legate has made in his complaint."

__

"Attempt." Sisko corrected harshly. "Attempt to cite claims of conspiracy, Admiral, between the UFP and Bajor. You were no more born yesterday than I was."

She looked at him; which was fine with him because he looked right back at her. "The UFP has refuted any claims of Maquis resurgence to the Cardassian Civilian Council and Central Command."

"Good!" Sisko said. "Because there has never been, nor is there planning to be, any inference to Maquis, Bajoran or otherwise, in any reporting from this station."

"In this matter perhaps, Captain," she accepted. "In details of the previous security breech, the inference was clearly there. Security matters are matters concerning all; Legate Damar cannot be faulted for his inquiry."

"His grasping," Sisko corrected. "His reaching, Admiral, for any straw. Whatever else you care to call it."

"Unwarranted, Captain," she apprised him. "Unacceptable. The assault of Doctor Lange, not the Cardassian query. The Union has been advised the incident concerning Doctor Lange is an internal matter, with a Federation suspect in custody. Chief O'Brien is to be charged with all criminal counts pending against him. Your analyses are sufficient in evidence at this time for this action to be deemed appropriate. As will any delay in Chief O'Brien's arrest be deemed insubordination on your part, Captain. 

"Additionally," she advised him, "within twenty-four hours Chief O'Brien is to be remanded to Star Fleet Security Marshals for extradition to the UFP to stand trial for court-martial and all criminal counts. A security patrol has been dispatched from the Cardassian border and is en route. This window of time should allow you and Doctor Bashir sufficient opportunity to complete all analyses; concluding your investigation. Doctor Bashir's request for a second forensic opinion by Doctor Tracy Sorge is honored by the UFP Assembly. Doctor Rebecca Sorge emeritus is recognized as qualified to make recommendations for appropriate choice of counselor. 

"As you stand notified, Captain," she informed him, "the charge of attempted murder in the first degree may be adjusted to murder in the first. Doctor Bashir's assessment of Doctor Lange's injuries, status, and prognosis is currently under evaluation by a convened board of Federation Physicians. Requests for genetic re-enhancement is not an option, and are denied. You will be notified of the panel's decision concerning Doctor Lange. As you will be notified to the trial schedule for Chief O'Brien in ample time to allow you to attend as Commanding Officer; if you so decide…" Sisko could still hear her speech echoing in his head as he walked from his office to Odo's along the Promenade.

"It is anticipated Major Kira Nerys, Lt. Commander Jadzia Dax and Chief Medical Officer Doctor Julian Bashir will be called as witnesses for the prosecution of Chief O'Brien on all military and criminal counts. The likelihood of required testimony for criminal prosecution only extends to the Cardassian civilian exile Elam Garak, as has the Ferengi Alliance been notified of the potential value of the civilian Quark agreeing to testify. Both civilians are to be immediately placed in protective custody until the determination has been made and the date of trial set. The Federation Assembly assumes the responsibility from you of advising First Minister Shakaar of the matter of his representative Doctor Lange in its entirety, reserving for First Minister his right to assign any investigator or team of investigators to assist or replace Chief Constable Odo. You will be notified as to First Minister Shakaar's decision in this, and any other matter. Including his right to remove Doctor Lange from Doctor Bashir's medical care. This is not anticipated and will be discouraged by the Federation panel of Physicians, if necessary, on behalf of Doctor Lange, who is a Human Neutral with her recognized home world being that of Federation colony Martian Colony 3, not Bajor Prime. Do you have any questions, Captain?"

"Somewhat awkward," Bashir prefaced explaining his request to the gray, scholarly face of Doctor Tracy Sorge on screen from Bajor.

"According to whom?" Sorge's personality was unchanged from the brusque man Bashir met the other day. "You, me, or Chancellor Gowron?"

"Chancellor Gowron…" Bashir said. "Oh, you mean the Klingon cadavers."

Sorge wasn't quite sure what else he would mean. "Spent half the night for a pat on the back and to be shown the door. Had a feeling someone might be calling me to come back."

"Oh," Bashir said. "Well, yes, we are -- or rather I am. Though, no, the request for a second forensic opinion is not to do with the Klingon officers. It's to do with Doctor Lange. Doctor Janice Lange," his hazel eyes stared wide into Sorge's narrowing inspection. "There's been another assault against the conference delegation, I'm sorry to say. And, yes, this time it would be Doctor Lange, as well as Chief O'Brien -- "

"We're on our way." Sorge's interruption was also its usual abrupt.

"Yes, thank you," Bashir hastened to accept before the transmission was severed. "However, I do have one other request -- "

"Make it quick."

"For a counselor," Bashir made it as quick and short as possible. "A recommendation, actually -- "

"A counselor?"

Bashir had this mental image of Sorge sticking his finger in his ear to help clear the canal. "For Doctor Lange. Perhaps I should clarify, Janice is alive -- " 

"Rebecca."

"Rebecca?" Bashir repeated to a softer, gray-haired figure with troubled, though pleasant blue eyes, moving into the foreground of the screen to stand at Sorge's side; he smiled. "Yes, of course. Your wife; Doctor Rebecca Sorge. And that's remarkably thoughtful. However, the recommendation I had in mind would be a counselor particularly knowledgeable in the area of violative assault -- "

"Physical?" Sorge charged.

"Yes, actually," Bashir agreed with a sigh. "As perhaps I should clarify, that while Doctor Lange is alive, she is critical. Extremely critical -- "

"Rebecca," Sorge assured. "We're out in the middle of a wilderness, Doctor, that's been under siege from some Empire or another for the last hundred or so years. On a planet that most never even heard of six years ago. I could name a thousand species less inhibited than we are. Not one of them any more willing to have something taken away from them that they had no intention of giving. We're on our way."

"Yes, thank you," Bashir said to himself as Sorge signed off. "Perhaps I should have also clarified it would be appreciated if the counselor could, in addition, interview the Chief. But perhaps that could wait, you're right."

"Overhead lighting," Odo could explain O'Brien's 'blue skies' possibly, as Bashir could probably explain the coloration as a refractory error; most of the room furnishings were of a muted silver tone, or gray.

"Yes, Constable," Sisko agreed. As were 'the stars' likely those evident beyond the portholes as O'Brien's head went snapping backward from the force of Kira's strike. They had nothing. Nothing to go on, no hint of a defense whatsoever and the UFP knew it. Offering the Chief up in sacrifice to stay the hungry wolves certain to demand blood. It would be a drumhead court-martial, nothing more. Life internment in the Federation prison colony for the criminally insane, Elba II. "There has to be something, Odo, something." Sisko picked up the reports to begin reading through them, one by one, again. 

"Why, what's this?" Chancellor Gowron's Ch'Pok of the Klingon legal counsel accepted the intriguing looking packet from the somber-faced monk, Vedek…? Ch'Pok couldn't place the Bajoran's name at the moment. There were so many of them scurrying around; scurrying back and forth. Anticipating every snap Kai Winn might make with her fingers; every look the dominant mother of Bajor might give them.

"A gift it would seem, Advocate Ch'Pok," Winn's slow nod moved in agreement with the interested furrow of the Klingon's family crest. His heavy hands surprisingly cultured in their deft, careful unfolding of the silk swaddling protecting its treasure.

"A Federation data padd," Ch'Pok was too intrigued to bother for now inquiring into its anonymous donor. "Much too intrigued," he threw back his head with an uproarious laugh as he scrolled through the frames of information. "You see this? Have you seen this?"

"It would seem most unlikely that I have not," the Kai's head tipped again in her vain amusement. 

Ch'Pok's roar waned to a hearty chuckle. "I like you. Yes, I like you. There are not too many outsiders the Empire regards with much respect, females especially. Take Il'Lakasan, Imperial Princess of the Romulan State for example; a shrew. A Romulan shrew. Her brothers fall asleep at night with pillows tied around their heads. But you…" his dark eyes glittered beneath their arched black brows, "I like you." Regal as any Klingon warrior. Her monk's crown, a helmet adorning the hooded, flowing habit of her faith. "Shakaar is a fool to reject the hand of friendship Chancellor Gowron extends to him; you understand this. As this," he gripped the padd in glory, "is all the evidence anyone needs to see that for themselves. And you give it to me. You give it to _us_."

"You speak well in words of flattery, Advocate," Winn rose gracefully from her seat. "Our hope is that your Chancellor speaks as well in words of wisdom and truth…I foresee an urgent transmission from the Federation shortly…"

"Eh?" She caught the Klingon by surprise slightly. His greed rising inside of him as he held onto the padd almost protectively, not wanting to share his present with anyone. "The Federation? In regard to this?"

"That?" Winn's smile flowed with her toward the door. "Oh, no, I wouldn't think so, Advocate. I wouldn't think that at all."

"So kind of you, First Minister to grant me a word." Her shield was up in full force as she entered Shakaar's domain. Her composure demure and placid. A musical intonation supporting her words. She was a piece of work, Winn. As deranged and unpredictable as their former Prefect Dukat.

"What's this?" Shakaar's shield was down. His potent charisma a cloud of dismay, his divine aura dulled by the troubles plaguing him. His words tired and ambivalent as he accepted the packet protected by its green silk cloth.

"A gift it would seem, First Minister," Winn agreed.

"Gift," Shakaar scrolled through two of however many frames before he slammed the padd down on the desk and stood up, towering over her handsome, aging face cloaking a soul as black as any Cardassian's. "You've seen this?"

"I would think yes, First Minister," Winn feigned despair behind her enjoyment. "You seem surprised."

"Surprised?" Shakaar glanced down at the padd. "That would be ridiculous, wouldn't it?"

"By content, First Minister?"

"By you, woman!" he charged. "Damn you!"

Her hand cracked his cheek. He stood there. "I am still the Kai," Winn's smile worked its way to returning to her lips. "Your profanity is uncalled for."

"And what about yours?" Shakaar picked up the padd, offering it to her.

Her glance grazed the clean outlines of the black alloy case. "I am told the source behind our information is extremely reliable."

He ignored the 'our'. "I am trying to feed the mouths of hungry children. Your source will just have to get in line -- "

"A man called Hawk," Winn's head inclined.

He was quick in his reply. Too quick, or possibly not quick enough. The choice of words all wrong, and as revealing anyway. "I have never heard of him."

"It does sound Federation, doesn't it?" Winn agreed.

Once perhaps. So long ago now Shakaar scarcely remembered his uncle's nobler exploits put alongside the man the Elder had become.

"Oh, First Minister," Winn said kindly as he turned away from her to stare out over his city beyond the Ministry's gates, "for all the years you and I have known each other…"

He reacted sharply with the light, loving touch of her hand on his shoulder, turning to look from the hand to that face. "In all the years you and I have known each other, if one thing astounds me most of all, is that you would choose to marry our faith rather than Dukat." He caught her hand before it reached his face. "For fifty years we crawled under their Occupation before we finally crawled out -- and up! You, yourself little more than a slave. Your body kicked and beaten; your flesh scarred. What makes you think the Klingons will be any different?"

"It's called Resistance, First Minister," she reminded, lest he had forgotten the man he was; the savior who refused to bow his head, inspiring the wills of so many others exhausted and afraid to believe the last hour is often the hardest. "Should they attempt, the Klingons cannot ever take what we will never give."

"It's called progress!" Shakaar released her to return to his desk and the padd. "Growth!"

"Destroyed by betrayal," Winn nodded. "I do understand…"

"What?" Shakaar insisted. "What do you understand? If you understood, you would understand it has as little to do with Damar -- " he flung the padd towards her, "as it has to do with Gowron. Our lives mean more than Resistance. Our homes, Temples, schools, more than shelters of garbage and branches of trees. We were happy once; we will be happy again. With the strength of the old to guide us, and the light of the new to propel us — _forward._ Out of the graveyards and gutters, not back into some other."

"Then denounce the betrayal, First Minister," she replied.

"I do denounce it!" he assured. "It along with you!"

Her pulse quickened. "As you misinterpret the intention behind the gift. It is meant to inform and be destroyed, not revealed."

Destroyed? Shakaar looked at the padd she clutched to her breast, hearing a call for his attention over his communication system. "Why? How many copies do you have that you could spare that one? -- Yes, what is?" he answered the impatient hail.

An urgent priority transmission from the UFP, the page identified. Shakaar was just standing there again, at his desk, feeling the robes of Winn move to his side.

"As is the betrayal not yours, First Minister," she consoled him. "Do not absorb it."

"I don't. Nor any ramifications from it." He answered the hail. Half-listening to the Federation Admiral Kawasaki expound upon some new security breech aboard the station, the injuries sustained by Lange, and some garbled nonsense about Sisko's Chief O'Brien being arrested for the crime of attempted murder and physical violative assault.

"He is innocent, of course," Winn concurred sympathetically in Shakaar's ear.

Shakaar almost said "Who cares?" Refraining and containing himself with a stiff, prudent nod to the Admiral on screen. "This is deeply troubling news, Admiral. Trusting the UFP with the appropriate medical care of Doctor Lange, I trust also you work diligently toward a fair resolve?"

His answer pleased her; he could read it in her face. "The Federation suspect O'Brien is to be remanded to the UFP within twenty-four hours, First Minster, for arraignment of trial," she reassured him. "The question the Federation Assembly poses to you is one of the conference continuing?"

"A request for a continuance, Admiral," he petitioned. "If that is an option? For the sessions to be reconvened once the Council of Ministers have selected an appropriate replacement for Doctor Lange. This, I find to be the most prudent choice, in respect to the issues under discussion, and also giving some time for these new wounds to heal."

A stumbling block. The Federation as afraid of Damar as it had been of Dukat. And as big a fool as Winn to place so much faith in words rather than actions. "Your argument is strong, First Minister…" she began nervously.

"As…" Shakaar continued, having no intentions of allowing her to finish, "I will gladly, personally, discuss the request for postponement in its entirety with Legate Damar, who no doubt is as disturbed by this outcome as we are."

She was satisfied; delighted even, barely unable to contain her joy. "Your offer of personal discussion is greatly appreciated, First Minister. I will convey it to the Cardassian Civilian Council, together with the Federation Assembly. You will be advised of Legate Damar's reply." 

She signed off. Shakaar's imagination not having to stretch itself any farther than the data padd to know what Damar's reply would be. He turned around to Winn, slipping the padd out from between her taloned paws. "By the Prophets, if the betrayal is revealed, it will be your head that hangs next to Damar's in the city square."

She smiled. "You speak in anger, First Minister, to be understood. But the betrayal is never ours, as it is always Damar's. Isn't it best for you to fully understand the soul of the man you deal with, as it is best for me to understand the equal danger of Chancellor Gowron?

"As isn't it unfortunate?" she tipped her crown in reverence to his bare head. "The child would find herself judged by the same acts of her own immorality?"

"Ironic perhaps," Shakaar purged the data base of the padd. "I wouldn't go as far as saying unfortunate, except for Chief O'Brien. No man should be tried and condemned for a rage most would find hard to contain themselves."

"Yes," Winn nodded. "We can pray the Federation comes to realize this for itself, but that is about all we can do."

"Yes," Shakaar slapped the padd back into her hands. "That is all we can do."

"I'll tell you now no Cardassian or Klingon had anything to do with this," Tracy Sorge positioned himself at the medical console in Bashir's office, peering over the initial screenings of Janice.

"Oh, yes, that's something on which just about everyone can agree…." Bashir smiled for Doctor Rebecca Sorge, a small, pleasant woman, close to her husband's age, and certainly much warmer in personality. "You're welcome to use the desk console," he inserted the case history and medical analysis of Janice's assault for her.

"Thank you," Rebecca Sorge settled in his chair.

"Who's the someone who can't?" Tracy was waiting when Bashir turned back to him.

"I beg your pardon? Oh. Well, actually there isn't anyone who disputes the analysis."

"Except for you."

"Well, no, neither do I," Bashir said. "It's my analysis."

"Now that I'm completely lost," Sorge agreed. "Funny, Doctor, but you don't seem the type to question yourself. What exactly do you want from me? "

Bashir smiled. "Your arrogance perhaps? I'm not questioning myself. Quite incapable of it, actually. As I'm quite close to incapable of making an error; I'm genetically enhanced. The prime suspect in Janice's assault is Chief Engineer O'Brien. The Federation representative to the conference, who just also happens to be my best friend. The analyses are as clear in condemning Miles as they are in refuting Cardassian, Klingon, or for that matter anyone's involvement other than the Chief."

"My arrogance has been earned," Sorge snorted, returning to the screenings. "Condemning's a strong word. Thought we had trials for that sort of thing?"

"Less than twenty-four hours and counting before Miles is remanded to the UFP."

"Where he'll hang," Sorge scanned briefly through the data just to have a look. "Or he should. You may not like my answer, Doctor. Prepared for that? Said a Klingon's hand didn't do this. Never said anything about the state of the mind of the man who did. Is that what you're thinking? Hoping for? Some form of induced psychosis? Your friend wouldn't be the first who found himself in such a position; doubt if he'll be the last…"

"Actually, it's the only explanation I personally have," Bashir agreed. "Can't prove it; can't even begin to…"

"And as soon as someone is able to," Sorge assured, "someone else will be right there to insure he doesn't the next time and so forth. Such is the way it goes, Doctor, in this universe, and I suspect most others."

"Yes. In the meantime there is a chemical profile that troubles me…Again, if someone were to ask, I wouldn't be able to explain, as of course, they will ask…"

"You have a transmission from Advocate Ch'Pok of the Klingon legal counsel," Dax excused her interruption of Sisko's conference with Odo.

While Sisko may not have been thinking of Martok, or any complaint the Klingon General might have to contribute to being left out in the cold over this latest security breech, Dax's notification did not surprise him. His expression initially reflecting something along the lines of "who"? It was a question immediately answered by a clear recollection of the physically sturdy, mentally strong figure of Gowron's finest who stooped to grace the station with his presence two or so years ago, only to leave the station with his head in his hands; neatly presented and packaged by Sisko.

"Gowron's finest if one were to ask Ch'Pok," Odo mentioned to Dax as the Captain muttered something about apologies not being necessary, turning for the console; his finger engaging the system with notable force.

"Your apologies," Odo further clarified for Dax. "Ch'Pok's best hope is probably a claim of a crossed signal."

"Too late now," Dax smiled with the beaming, cheery face of Ch'Pok appearing on screen.

"Ah, Captain Sisko," he exuded, adding insult to injury with the suggestion that the Captain might be as happy to see him as he was enthralled to see Sisko looking so well.

"Ch'Pok," the edge in Sisko's tone hacked off the lawyer's name with the deftness of a Klingon bat'telh. "It would be my advice any questions Chancellor Gowron may have he should address to the Federation Assembly."

"All on behalf of you, Captain," Ch'Pok suggested questions having been asked, his black brows dipped in furrowed sympathy, his hands fashioned in the wisdom of a pyramid formation. "To which the UFP was most appreciative on one hand -- and most dismayed to hear on the other," he inclined forward from his seat on what appeared to be the cloudy confines of a Klingon bridge around him. "Interesting response, don't you agree? From Allies? In this affair, as with any other? … This disturbing affair," he submitted with a discreet check of the translated pronunciation of the Chief's name, "with your Chief Engineer…Mills Brein."

"He was close," Odo grunted to Dax.

"Not bad, actually," she agreed.

"To repeat," Sisko replied.

"To assure," Ch'Pok embraced one of his home world's proverbs even if he didn't embrace the one about not trusting a man who smiles too much, "'a warrior does not let a friend face danger alone.'"

"Your turn," Odo nodded to Sisko.

To the contrary, Sisko had no intentions of continuing the conversation at all; his finger strategically placed for disconnecting the transmission. "Your support is noted, Advocate, as we are well-equipped -- "

"We shall see, won't we?" Ch'Pok agreed; Sisko's finger stalling. "I will naturally require a detailed accounting of your investigation -- not to draft Brein's defense, oh, no. Merely to familiarize myself with what Constable Odo anticipates to incorporate in his prosecution."

"O'Brien," Sisko unconsciously corrected the Chief's name. "You have one minute to explain."

"And counting," Odo seconded that.

Ch'Pok was still smiling. "A motion for a hearing, Captain, refuting the just cause of my client's arrest and extradition to the UFP."

"Pending transfer," Odo corrected.

"I wouldn't count on it, Constable," Ch'Pok corrected him. "Federation Magistrate T'Lar is en route from the Bajoran outpost Janele; to arrive by Klingon battle cruiser 2100 today -- it was the least we could do. I, myself, shall be there within the hour."

"Yes, well," Odo spoke first once the transmission was severed, "I suppose a better question would have been what client?"

"Audacity," Sisko choked. "Sheer audacity, Constable."

"Whose?" Odo asked. "Ch'Pok's? Gowron's? Or the UFP?" he nodded as Sisko's finger engaged the com system, ordering an immediate priority hail to be issued to the UFP, together with demanding an immediate answer that had better be forthcoming.

CHAPTER TWENTY

"Hungry?" The touch of Rebecca Sorge's hand was a mother's pushing back the straggling stands of Janice's hair out from in front of her eyes as she lay there feeling the stiff pressure of her neck supporting her head and the smooth, foreign material of the sheet covering her, so unlike the bed linens in Anon's quarters.

"Thirsty," Janice answered, the sound of her voice comforting. "What happened to me?"

"We're not quite sure yet," Rebecca smiled, back in Janice's line of vision with a cool dish of sherbet.

"Me either." Janice's laugh was light, refreshing, and relieving for Rebecca to hear. "Is it safe for me to sit up?"

"Oh, yes, I'm sure…" Rebecca set the dish aside to help her. "It's not your back…"

"No, it's my neck…" Janice supported her neck as she worked to push herself up to a seated position. "I'm not sure why, it just feels so heavy…"

Rebecca's hopes rose for a moment of a possible memory coming forward; apparently not. "Sherbet?" she extended Janice the dish.

"Sounds good," Janice accepted. "What do I look like?"

"Well…" Rebecca debated over the complexion that certainly wasn't healthy. Much of the gross discoloration caused by the hemorrhaging of capillaries and blood vessels of her face and throat cleaned, the child's eyes were glazed and hollow looking with their darkened rings. "Bashir's pretty good, actually. You look a little tired perhaps?"

"That took a while," Janice smiled.

"At least you're alert. There's much to say for that."

"I'm not sure how alert," Janice admitted. "The last time I was here Anon was the one in bed, not me."

"Anon?" Rebecca sat back down in the bedside chair.

"Perhaps he's been here," Janice agreed. "There's quite a lot that's a blur, apparently…is there?" her head turned to ask Rebecca directly.

"Today's Thursday," Rebecca offered.

"What happened to Wednesday?"

"Well," Rebecca said, "perhaps you and I can try to figure that out together. Do you remember anything of Wednesday at all? Getting up, for example? Washing your face, or cleaning your teeth?"

"No," Janice frowned. 

"Nothing at all?" Rebecca encouraged. Janice studied her; she smiled. "Doctor Rebecca Sorge. We met at breakfast on Tuesday."

"Yes," Janice said. "After I saw Anon…is…" she hesitated out of fear of hearing what she may not want to hear, "is Anon all right? I can't remember anything after we were talking…I remember talking…"

"Anon…" Rebecca searched her data padd.

"The Cardassian delegate," Janice stopped her. "Gul Anon Dukat."

"Oh, yes," Rebecca recalled where she had heard the name before. "The young man who was injured in the terrorist attack at the Ferengi restaurant -- that was Monday," her hands settled in her lap. "And, yes, I'm sure by today he's fine."

"Monday?" Janice frowned.

"It's all right," Rebecca assured. "It's better to remember everything you possibly can even if things seems a little confused at first."

"No, they're not confused, I am. How could I be here without Anon…where's Anon? Are you sure he's all right?" she verified. "Not Monday, Tuesday…yes, I'm sure it was Tuesday…"

"Go on," Rebecca said when Janice paused, her expression frightened.

"I'm not sure…" Janice replied.

"Of what?" Rebecca smiled. "What you're trying to say? Or what you want to say? You can say anything you want to and it will go no farther than these four walls. That's why I'm here. As a counselor, and certainly also as a friend. You've been injured. You realize this; correct? What you don't remember or understand, we'll work together to understand."

"Protocol," Janice admitted finally.

"Protocol?" Rebecca said.

"Yes," Janice smiled with an awkward sweep of her hair out of her eyes. "I keep forgetting about protocol. It's a direct violation of protocol for the Cardassian and Bajoran representatives to associate with each other outside the conference. I must still be the representative. It isn't very likely Anon's forgotten about me; I'm his wife."

Rebecca couldn't help thinking about something Tracy always said about nothing being new under the suns, the moons, or the stars. And nothing was new. Not the child-like innocence in the face asking its question, or the interest and concern expressed for the well-being and whereabouts of an absent lover. "Rules of Protocol could explain why Anon isn't here, couldn't it?" she straightened up with her smile intact. "Would you like to talk about Anon?"

"See him, actually," Janice admitted wistfully. "But that's all right. I also have to learn to trust him…as he says, yes, Anon. And leave it at that."

Wednesday had been another sleepless night similar to Monday with its tireless investigation, and no less tragic that the victims of this second terrorizing assault on the conference delegation numbered only one; Doctor Janice Lange. With the believed perpetrators, not suspected Bajoran Special Forces, but determined to be Chief Engineer Miles O'Brien. It was already noon of the following day, Thursday, when Klingon legal Advocate Ch'Pok strode his way into Odo's temporary office; the interrogation room of security's isolation wing where Bajoran and Federation security officials talked to their suspects, not tortured, as had been the Cardassian way.

The Klingon way with dealing with suspects hinted at being disloyal to the Empire, betraying, or derelict in any way was even simpler: death. Immediate, as often violent, and certainly final. Chancellor's Gowron efforts to promote a growing civility to his world of warriors incorporated employing the fine art of rhetoric to soothe its Federation critics, no more evident than in his expansion of a Klingon legal consul. An institution, who by this date, bore marked similarities to gifted, silver-tongued Sophists, a highly distorted version of what should be lawyer, who reigned some 3,000 years ago in Earth's past. Hated, and the subject of much heated debate and ridicule back then, they were equally hated now; ridicule was not on Sisko's mind. He remembered Advocate Ch'Pok as clearly as he remembered a star date two years past and the Federation and Klingon charges pending against Commander Worf in his role as Commander of the Defiant.

It was the time of the Pentath III tragedy, Rudellian plague, and Worf's accused massacre of 414 Klingon civilians while escorting Cardassian transports desperate to deliver supplies to its colonies along the Klingon border. Ultimately the proposed massacre was revealed to be a ruse, an ambitious effort by the Klingon High Counsel to discourage Federation escort of Cardassian supply transports. The charges pending against Worf, running a gamut from dereliction in duty, to the outrageous Klingon claim of murder in his heart, dropped. Ending the Klingon attempt to extradite Worf to his home world. It was Ch'Pok who returned to Qo'noS instead, failed in his attempt of prosecution.

The charges here, now, pending against Chief O'Brien were solely Federation in their origin. Ch'Pok advancing an interest in defending the Chief rather than prosecuting; the Advocate, along with his Chancellor Gowron, had to have something far bigger in mind than the salvation of Miles Edward O'Brien. What could it be? Sisko studied the muscular, barrel frame of Ch'Pok moving easily across the floor. A mark and air of dignity in the Klingon's walk, and on his middle-aged face with its tightly braided hair; he wasn't Martok. Lacking the General's dramatic flair. He wasn't Gowron with the Chancellor's penchant for entrancing and frightening his audience with that sudden, bulging maniacal stare just when the viewer thought the Klingon leader could be a man of wisdom and reason beneath the prevailing stigma of his race; predator.

Who Ch'Pok also wasn't, was Dukat. Though the Advocate's presentation of suave sophistication hinted of a Cardassian influence, rather than Federation, Ch'Pok's wit was sharply intelligent. The light in his dark Klingon eyes, keen and discerning. His skills two years older than when Sisko first met him, and two years more perfected and polished. A new and different breed of Klingon, equally as disconcerting as his fathers gone before him. Gowron must have gone to the ends of his Empire to find him initially, as well as to the ends of his Empire today to find Ch'Pok now. The charges posed against Chief O'Brien weren't twelve hours cold; definitely there was something far greater at stake and on Gowron's mind than determining who actually was responsible for the senseless and vicious assault of the Human Neutral Doctor Lange. What, remained to be seen; not if Sisko had any say in the matter.

As according to Ch'Pok, the Captain did have a say. In at least how he wished for them to proceed in organizing the defense of Chief Engineer…"O'Brein." Ch'Pok continued to transpose the E and the I of the Chief's name while reiterating the point and purpose of his visit as he walked in to stand among their tight little group waiting.

"O'Brien," Sisko ignored the reference to 'they', the two of 'them' Ch'Pok and he as a team, correcting the pronunciation of the Chief's name again, as he remained standing, as Odo remained; Dax. Major Kira maintaining her post elsewhere. Outside, for the moment, the heavily guarded quarters of Doctor Lange on the Infirmary's isolation wing, allowing Doctor Rebecca Sorge the necessary privacy of her examination and consultation with Doctor Lange.

Mister Worf currently continued the painstaking task of yet another series of comparisons of all the data accumulated. The Chief remained alone in his security isolation cell, far out of earshot and sight of the security conference room; his senses dulled by the grim reality of the situation, no longer by the depressive qualities of alcohol.

As did Quark and Garak maintain an uncomfortable residence in their respective security isolation cells. The details of why continuing to be avoided for now. Their senses intermittently vacillating between boredom and annoyance, fear and intrigue. Odo, concerned they might know something more, Sisko hoping to be convinced what they knew, he knew, and that was little, if anything of true value to the investigation.

Who struggled to know more alongside the rest of Sisko and his senior staff, as well as the only one who sat in the security conference room, was Doctor Bashir. Begrudgingly called away by Sisko from his conference with Doctor Tracy Sorge, Bashir was visibly eager to understand the why behind Ch'Pok's visit and offer of assistance.

"You're not supposed to care why," Odo muttered an offer of words to the wise following Sisko's dark, shooting look over his jittery and excited Chief Medical Officer all wide-eyed and interested upon hearing of Ch'Pok's arrival.

"But I do care why," Bashir protested. "Shouldn't you? Somewhat prejudicial to presume the man can't possibly have anything to offer without allowing him the opportunity to speak…Even though I admit," he acknowledged not a moment later with a stiff, silent, clearly prejudicial nod to Dax upon Ch'Pok's arrival in the conference room, "what Ch'Pok could have to add without clearly implicating the Klingon Empire in some sort of conspiring effort to halt the conference proceedings is beyond me…

"Yes, it's quite beyond me," Bashir fell back in his seat in a pensive study of the Klingon Advocate, listening to the abused pronunciation of the Chief's name as well as Sisko's clipped correction. "Should be able to at least pronounce the name of the man's he's prepared to defend -- if the intent is defense. Rather than some Klingon conspiracy, which, yes, clearly it has to be. Of no true surprise to anyone, I might add. After all, if there isn't a Klingon conspiracy afoot, there's certainly a Cardassian, Romulan, or Dominion one somewhere readying itself to rear its ugly head. The Borg are truthfully the most honest of aggressors. Simply announcing resistance is futile, you will surrender and be assimilated; that fairly settles the question of their intent, doesn't it?"

What else Sisko chose to ignore beyond Ch'Pok's smiling distinction of they two as allies, were the incoherent mumblings of Bashir sitting in a combined and contradictory posture of a fixed, casual sprawl in Odo's chair behind him. What Sisko couldn't ignore was Ch'Pok himself.

"He's innocent, of course, Captain," Ch'Pok boasted a belief in a man he didn't know which Sisko did, and that to Ch'Pok, determined such a belief not to be misplaced or erroneous, but common sense. "Simply a matter of proving it to your Federation's liking," he preempted Sisko's reminder of the questionable value of common sense placed alongside such staggering physical and circumstantial evidence to the contrary.

"And I would, Advocate," Sisko spoke anyway, "most assuredly, be interested in listening to what you have to present of tangible value."

"What I have to present?" that spawned a chuckle or two. "What I have to present is little by comparison to you -- it's all right here," he indicated the neatly arranged row of data padds on Chief Constable Odo's desk. "Quite clearly, all right here -- simply waiting to be extracted." He moved the data padds aside to set his briefcase down on the desk, releasing its latches and retrieving one Cardassian data cylinder for Odo to install in his console, and one Federation padd for Sisko to access with a respectful nod for each of them; in particular, Odo. "I've compiled a preliminary list of witnesses I plan to call in Chief -- O'Brien's, is it? defense." His smile crinkled the corner of his lips. "Yours to incorporate in your records, Constable. As well as yours to review, Captain, and mine to adjust if necessary -- I doubt if it will be -- upon my examination of your reports against those submitted to the Federation -- I doubt if there's any difference, unintentional or otherwise, and so it's all just a matter of formality. One that likewise mandates, Constable," he promised Odo, "you receive my finalized listing of witnesses; which you shall. Prior to commencement of trial -- which in this case is a hearing; there shall be no cause for trial. As confident am I of that outcome, as you are currently confident, Constable in your prosecution -- unwarranted prosecution, Constable. Potentially unlawful. I further plan to discuss with my client after this matter is finalized, his alternatives in citing the UFP for wrongful imprisonment and false arrest; the final decision, of course, will be Chief O'Brien's. I can only make recommendations; I cannot force a man to embrace his civil rights."

"Yes, well, Major Kira…" Odo had already installed and was reading the so called 'witness' list that Sisko was no doubt reading. As was Commander Dax reading over his shoulder from her station at the Captain's side…as was Bashir reading, his chin and nose down around in the general vicinity of Odo's hand scrolling through the one page of data.

"Major Kira," Ch'Pok reminded, "was the first officer on the scene."

"After the fact," Odo reminded. "Not during or before."

"To where Major Kira either witnessed my client's attempt to ascertain the success of his efforts, or his attempt to assist Doctor Lange to the best of his abilities, despite his own weakened state," Ch'Pok's proposed shrewdness was laughable; the keen, discerning light in his eyes, bright. "It's all right there in your reports, Constable, as I said. Merely waiting to be extracted."

"Yes, well," Odo countered, "I'll refrain from asking -- for the sake of your 'client', is that the best you can do? To ask instead about this fascination you have with citing me as some form or another of prosecutor."

"That would be my question, Advocate," Sisko handed Ch'Pok back his padd. "Constable Odo is bound by his duty, the same as everyone else."

"Unpleasant duty," Odo added. "There's no disputing what happened to Doctor Lange, as clearly someone is accountable. The evidence, not me, points to O'Brien."

"May I comment?" Ch'Pok's smile focused on Sisko.

"Comment, Advocate," Sisko granted. "Imply malicious intent of any of my staff, out of the question."

"That would be formal appointment as Prosecutor of record for the purpose of my client's hearing…" Ch'Pok withdrew a second Cardassian data cylinder for Odo to install and review. "Suggested by me in the interest of expediency. Recommended by the UFP Assembly under this same premise to the Bajoran Council of Ministers, and agreed to by unanimous decision. The Cardassian Civilian Council, as well as Chancellor Gowron, likewise have expressed no immediate concerns or complaints to your appointment. The matter of the UFP accepting the petition for hearing," he shrugged away a minor detail, "of course, rests with Magistrate T'Lar…Though I foresee as little difficulty," his focus and smile returned to Sisko, "in convincing her to see things our way. When may I consult with O'Brien; now, I feel is best."

"Yes, well, as far as Quark and Garak are concerned…" Odo returned to reading the list of defense witnesses while Bashir busied himself with standing up and gaping off down the corridor after Sisko and Ch'Pok, and Dax took her time meandering over to join him at his desk.

"Actually, I was thinking how the final decision does rest with the Chief as far as accepting Ch'Pok's offer," Dax handed him Benjamin's padd with its copy of the witness list he had forgotten in the excitement.

"Actually, I was thinking it probably should be someone other than Ch'Pok to inform Major Kira of his plan to call her as witness for the defense," Odo accepted the padd to toss it aside, unintentionally or otherwise, a little roughly. It skidded to the corner of his desk where it teetered for moment before dropping with a clatter on the floor. He watched it teeter, as he watched it drop; leaving it there. "Not that I mean to suggest there is any malicious intent on anyone's part; including my own."

"No," Dax agreed. "Merely no interest by anyone in being made to choose sides."

"Formally made to choose sides," Odo finally consented to stooping to retrieve the padd and toss it into the pile of others on his desk.

"Yes, well, I certainly can't be required to choose sides," Bashir woke up from his trance to contribute his concerns of conflict of interest. "What am I expected to do? Utterly deny what the medical evidence is quite clear in showing? No condemnation of the Chief, as much as I don't want him to be guilty, I can't begin to prove he's innocent -- or even suggest he's innocent -- may be innocent -- " he was facing the broad, barrel chest of Ch'Pok. Where the Klingon Advocate came from, he had no idea. Back along the corridor, obviously.

"I will also want to interview Doctor Lange, Doctor," Ch'Pok's finger extended like a long, threatening stick. "Following my consultation with Chief O'Brien."

Bashir flushed angrily and protectively. "Out of the question. Doctor Lange has suffered a most brutal and vicious attack. The injuries sustained find her extraordinarily critical -- she's only emerged from a coma, for God's sake. I can't tell you from one hour to the next if she won't relapse and die despite all our efforts…" Of course the fact that he found her sitting somewhat tilted up in bed, thoughtfully spooning raspberry sherbet into her mouth when he popped in to notify Rebecca he had been called into conference with Sisko and would return post-haste, was beside the point. 

Which it was beside the point. The hand holding the spoon was unsteady as it was weak. In another week it would be weaker as the muscles of her extremities steadily atrophied in spite of the neuro transducers implanted to stimulate her motor and sensory reflexes until rigorous physical therapy could safely begin. The flexible alloy implant supporting her head in lieu of her damaged cervical vertebrae -- quite literally connecting her head to her shoulders at this point in time, would be there her lifetime. As would the synthetic reconstruction of her larynx, and the dismal prognosis of 15% brain damage -- if she were lucky. Luck was not in her cards, quite obviously. Hers or anyone's. Not since the damn conference began, or even before it began.

"As all of that hardly begins to address the psychological state of the woman's mind once she's been helped to understand the full and complete story behind her attack -- if she can even begin to understand it," Bashir argued against the retreating, unconcerned back of Ch'Pok. "And not that there's a Klingon alive who can begin to understand or respect what I'm talking about!" 

"What I mean to say," he continued to sputter after Ch'Pok vanished around the corner of the corridor one more time. "The woman's been through enough. The last thing she needs -- "

"Is some foul-mouthed Klingon leaning over her?" Dax actually did say foul-mouthed, not foul-smelling. As she said leaning, not leering. Bashir heard foul-smelling and leering; Klingon, about the only part of the sentence he got right.

"Yes," Bashir stared angrily back at her, into her dark, brown eyes. Uncertain if she was ridiculing him, or accusing him of ridiculing Klingons and hence Worf. "Damn Worf, that's precisely what I mean…Of course, the fact that the man is a foul-smelling, foul-mouthed Klingon," he stalked off, "is beside the point. Other than that is clearly what he is. A foul-smelling, foul-mouthed, leering Klingon, and God knows it's the last thing I'd want leaning over me, whether I was at death's door, or in the peak of health…" His sputtering ended only with his departure to return to the Infirmary and his patient.

"Divide and conquer," Dax offered to Odo an explanation for Ch'Pok's methods and Bashir's madness.

"Yes, well, it wouldn't seem to be in the Advocate's best interest to divide his witnesses," Odo countered.

"That would depend on his actual agenda," Dax picked up Benjamin's padd with its list of intended.

"You're on there," Odo assured.

"Yes." Along with Odo, Kira, Quark, Garak, Leeta, Rom and Morn. Benjamin, Worf, Bashir, Lange and Damar and his crew; the Dukat brothers. And interestingly enough the deceased Cardassian assistant Mister Paq. An indication that what Ch'Pok might know concerning the assault of Lange, he was a little sketchy in the details surrounding Monday's terrorist attack. "Actually what Ch'Pok did was simply list everyone affiliated with the conference," Dax returned Benjamin's padd with a smile. "It's called leaving no stone unturned."

Odo grunted. "He'll have to turn a few to dig up Paq."

"Figuratively," Dax agreed. The physical remains of Paq were currently interned in one of the cargo hold's of Damar's Galor-class battle cruiser the Tir, awaiting proper burial on Cardassia Prime. "I'm more fascinated by how Ch'Pok intends to intrigue Damar into staying."

Odo snorted or grunted again. "Implication, or outright accusation of a Cardassian conspiracy behind the assault of Lange, how else?"

"Do you think he actually knows that?" Dax frowned.

"No," Odo assured, confident Ch'Pok's agenda was to plant a seed of doubt and suspicion deep enough to leave everyone wondering, paving the way for O'Brien to walk away a free man guilty, or innocent, or somewhere in between.

"The Chief is innocent," Dax's faith in O'Brien was as unshakable as everyone else's, and like everyone else simply at a loss as where or how to begin to prove it.

"Innocent until proven guilty," Odo was familiar with the Federation way.

"At what price?" Dax agreed, moving thoughtfully along the corridor on her way to resume helping Worf with the comparison analyses. "Should we even care?" About Ch'Pok's agenda? The potential of malicious intent to turn the accusing finger away from O'Brien and point it likely in some direction toward the Cardassian corner? Did it really matter? Guilty or not guilty of this conspiracy, Damar was likely guilty of some other; he was presumed guilty of some other. Suspect in a Cardassian effort to undermine Bajoran security by the installation of an Intelligence operation, otherwise known as a Consulate. The Dukats, his cohorts in deceit and crime.

"Therefore," Dax nodded to herself, "does it really matter?" Guilty or innocent, Damar was someone to blame, other than the Chief, for Lange's attack, even if they couldn't begin to prove or prosecute the Cardassian Emperor. 

"I don't know though," she confessed the extent of her misgivings to Worf following briefing him of Ch'Pok's arrival and the presumptions surrounding him. "Convincing someone Damar may be responsible for ordering Lange to be killed is one thing. The nature of the assault, however -- "

"Is ludicrous," Worf assured. "As ludicrous as any attempt to implicate Damar. Doctor Lange's attack is the work of a maddened individual, personally motivated."

"Not necessarily politically," Dax nodded. "That leaves one of several thousand potential suspects other than the Chief."

"Bajorans not excluded," Worf had no proof to his theory but he could read between the lines of the damning physical evidence of furniture and belongings cast, not necessarily overturned or thrown aside in Lange's desperate struggle to stay her attacker equally determined to prevail. "A simple matter of restraining the full capabilities of his strength to create an impression of a Human male." 

"A Human male in a conflicting heightened/weakened state. Incapable of restraining himself with Lange, but capable of restraining himself with the furniture?" Dax poked a hole in the psychology behind the theory. "Worf, that's not only terrifying, it suggests motivation apart from personal."

"If the intent were shaming before killing. Yes, I would then concur political motivation apart from personal would be possible."

"A simple matter of which species would be more inclined to view violative assault as a method of shaming," Dax nodded, planning her research as she did so.

"Klingons," Worf submitted.

Dax smiled. "Together with Cardassians and Humans. We're back to the Chief… I'm not sure where Bajorans stand," she frowned, dreading asking Kira for clarity. Something her research was not likely to afford her; sure to be confused in conflicting impressions as all early anthropological studies tended to be…ten years? The average span of time the majority of the scientific community had even been aware of a species called Bajoran? That certainly constituted early anthropological studies.

Worf snorted. Finding the moral fiber of Bajoran social interaction loosely woven; amass with glaring contradictions set aside the puritanical posture of its Vedeks and Kais. "They change mates as often as…"

"Civilians change their clothes," Dax proposed in example following his sudden, pensive pause. Because while it was accurate to say both Worf and she changed their clothes daily, if at all possible, it was commonly only to put on an exact replica of what they had worn the day before; their uniforms.

"Yes," Worf nodded nevertheless stubbornly, firm in his convictions the Bajoran state was little more than a frolicking world of nymphs and muses before the Cardassian occupation, during, and as well, after.

"One of these days we'll have to go back to Risa," Dax patted his cheek. "Without Leeta or Julian," or for that matter, Quark.

"I am in no hurry to return to Risa," Worf reminded as she turned to leave him with his staid schematics while she prepared to embark on a journey through the exciting, enticing, occasionally frightening world of anthropological study.

"That's not what you said when we left," Dax shook her head. 

"I was coerced into agreeing," Worf returned to plodding his way through the maze of information, every turn a blind alley. "Enticed, cajoled -- " A thought crossed his mind; a face. Pfrann Dukat's. The bleeding heart of a Bajoran dangling from his makeshift spear. His rage as fierce and vicious as it was all encompassing and compelling. "That is nonsense, senseless," Worf shook the thought away. "He is still Cardassian."

Despite his slight, youthful frame.

"The motive for such action is unfounded and weak."

Revenge against a Federation who dared to incarcerate him however momentarily? As they strove to incarcerate his father for life on Elba II -- the fate O'Brien faced. Revenge against the Bajoran state that refused to bow its head fifty long years of Occupation?

"It's weak," Jadzia was back; reading his mind and kissing his cheek.

"It is a thought only," Worf defended his own innate mistrust and dislike of the Cardassian Union; the Chief was not alone in his hate. "If Chancellor Gowron is right about nothing else, he is right about one thing. It is a fool who trusts a Cardassian. The hand the Empire bites, is the hand the Union eats."

"I'll go along with that," Dax nodded. "And if Lange had been found with a sharp implement protruding from her throat, rather than her stocking wrapped around it, I might even go along with Pfrann Dukat being a questionable suspect -- " she stopped.

"What?" Worf said.

"Kira's hand phaser," Dax attacked his schematic displays of Lange's quarters. "Did you find it? Lange didn't put it in the replicator -- the system didn't shut down -- or perhaps it did shut down," she stopped as suddenly as she began with a sigh. "With the eruption of the systems due to the terrorists' shunts, who knows if the replicating system shut down for any reason other than the obvious? As it's always possible Lange knew enough to drop the hand phaser in a hazardous waste disposal."

"Pfrann Dukat had a Federation hand phaser," Worf agreed. "A question never asked as to how or why."

Dax sighed again. "No, just when. Lange was attacked Wednesday, not Monday."

"As were there traces of phaser and transporter activity in Dukat's quarters, together with traces of Bajoran DNA on the console determined to be a control center for the terrorist faction."

"Together with a Bajoran powerful enough to overcome five Klingons -- surgical alteration?" Dax was frowning at him. "Genetic alteration? Is it possible the Cardassians have mastered manipulating their DNA patterns to be indiscernible?"

"Genetic manipulation is a skill used in propagating the ranks of the Jem'Hadar," Worf reminded. "As is genetic distortion the practice behind which the Dominion Changelings attempt to hide."

"They didn't come away without learning something in other words," Dax was still frowning. "It's still weak, Worf. It's so weak it's almost frightening -- just how far bigotry and hate can mislead you," she clarified, "if it's allowed to. Regardless of how viable Pfrann Dukat's potential reasons for wanting Lange dead might be, their foundation is clearly subjective. As subjective as those assigned to be the Chief's; rejection. I don't believe it. What I do believe…or at least know," she hesitated, "is if anyone had a good, solid reason for wanting Lange dead, it's Shakaar. Who either grossly underestimated the strength of her commitment to her independent and Neutral status with her clear, unwavering support of Damar's proposal, or Shakaar didn't want her as representative in the first place, finding himself outvoted by the Council of Ministers…

"Flagrantly demonstrated, Worf," she insisted, "by his refusal to withdraw the Bajoran Special Forces when he knows as well as you and I,_ and_ Benjamin, the terrorist Threat Force either infiltrated, or number themselves among his troupe -- this is insane," she turned away from him with a troubled hand to her head. "What am I saying?"

"It is subjective," Worf replied. "As to accuse Shakaar of actions no less than that of a terrorist himself is unprecedented."

"No more unprecedented than it is to accuse the Chief," Dax left that time for good to attempt to clear her head and hopefully make some sense out of her anthropological studies.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

"You're alone," Rebecca Sorge rejoined her husband absorbed in studying some confusing looking molecular display on Bashir's console.

"Bashir was called away for some conference with Sisko. Sure the Federation isn't any quicker or slower than anyone else in drawing conclusions they don't want to draw."

He was talking about himself and the disturbing loss of a young doctor who should have had her career and life ahead of her; Rebecca knew that. She eyed the display. "What conclusions are they drawing?"

"Ryetalyn," Sorge defined what was obvious in the chemical profile Bashir insisted upon labeling as mysterious or suspicious.

Rebecca smiled. "Yes. The one part that's fairly obvious to me."

Sorge grunted. "Obvious that it's a wonder it didn't kill who it was trying to cure."

"Janice?" Rebecca guessed.

"Who either suffered a particular severe case of Rigelian fever that she was able to assimilate the overdose -- lethal overdose -- or an acute hypersensitivity to the serum; either way she clearly did survive."

"With the high levels of antibodies potentially masking whatever Bashir hopes to find, that he can't find in O'Brien's screenings." Rebecca had the idea.

"He can find it," Sorge corrected. "Same as I can. If he looks for it; he's not looking for it."

"Does he have a reason to?" Rebecca asked quietly.

Sorge was silent. Clicking off the display and clicking on a new one; a particularly grisly one of Janice in death. "Should have been postmortem. As it turned out, it wasn't. How did you make out?"

"Well, she certainly looks far better than that," Rebecca turned from the picture to approach the desk. "Confused, certainly. Frightened, to an extent -- "

"And with a little luck," Sorge said, "up to being spared the prognosis of 15% brain damage -- or brain change, as Bashir prefers to call it; who knows why. I wouldn't count on it. Bashir's an artist in his own right; who he isn't, is God."

"Arrogance earned?" Rebecca smiled, toying with the arrangement of choices on the desk console.

Her suggestion ruffled his Federation background. "To an extent. In my day genetic enhancement was frowned upon as not being worth the risk; who knows about nowadays."

"And what would they say in your day?" Rebecca asked, though his day was the same as hers. "Of a Human mating with a Cardassian?"

"Well…" Sorge turned back to his studies, "if they had the good sense of their God, and what their parents should have taught them, they'd say exactly what I'd say."

"And what's that?"

"It's fine until one shows up at your dinner table." Sorge reengaged his chemical analysis along with a picture of Gul Anon Dukat in life, though in an expected degree of unconscious pain as he lay waiting on Bashir's operating table in preparation of having his abdomen repaired rather than his brain jarred awake.

Rebecca laughed, not at the image, but at the claim. "That has to be one of the silliest things I've ever heard you say."

"Doubt it," Sorge did. "The same as I wouldn't doubt it to be true of most -- not because of his race; spare me your liberal outrage. Because of his affinities and his affiliations."

"Affinities." The word pricked at Rebecca like a needle pricking her skin. "I'm not so sure I'm as liberal-minded as I've thought," her nod for the scan of Janice was contained. "Do you think Anon did that to her? Either in anger or some bizarre demonstration of affection?"

"No," Sorge assured. "Anon's last interlude was more than twelve hours before Lange's assault -- don't have to take my word for it," his nod for the chemical analysis was firm. "It's right here. What Bashir's overlooking in his fascination with the destructive properties of ryetalyn is there's one thing Human and Cardassian males can't do, and that's produce an offspring together. They can carry one; Humans that is. Would be somewhat more difficult for a Cardassian, but it wouldn't be impossible -- save for these two. Anon's the one allergic to O'Brien, not Janice. Put that together with a double dosage of ryetalyn antibodies -- Janice's and Anon's -- and the evidence of Anon's earlier participation is all but destroyed." He turned around to his wife. "The next dissertation is yours. Other than to say if Janice and Anon ever do intend to attempt to propagate some time within the next millennium, they'll need an antidote for their antidote. The man was inept who dispensed the serum. If he still has a license; he shouldn't."

"What makes you think it was a man?" Rebecca smiled. "Inept, rather than unfamiliar, desperate, and severely limited by the lack of available -- _toys_," her hand fluttered over the console, "you talking heads take for granted?"

"Janice tell you that?"

"She mentioned something of how they met, yes. Not too much more than that. She's exhausted. Quite reasonably so. Far more perplexed and absorbed with wondering where Anon might be, other than at her bedside where she clearly wants him to be, even if she isn't quite willing to admit that. Also quite reasonable; the wondering. And the reasons behind it."

"Typical," Sorge snorted. "Not to take the devil's side, but does it ever occur to any of you we might not be where you'd prefer us to be for reasons apart from treachery and deceit?"

"Now you sound like some stuffed shirt from some forgotten generation in some ancient past," Rebecca strode forward. "Of course it occurs to us. The same as it occurs to me a plausible reason for Anon's absence could very well be -- _that!_" the fury in her hand flashed from the screening of Janice, to pushing back the gray waves of her hair. "Unthinkable the cause and reason behind a woman's assault could be a disgruntled animal -- yes, animal," she insisted. "An animal did that. A barbarian -- is that what we've become? Is that who we are? You're quite right when you say it's an entirely different matter when it's one of your own." She stopped abruptly upon noticing Bashir in the doorway.

"I'm not sure if I'm happy to hear that," Bashir apologized, not meaning to intrude, and of course, he wasn't intruding. "If I understand correctly, your anger has to do with the analysis proposing to be as conclusive as my own; the Chief is responsible?"

"Little early for that determination," Sorge reset the displays, not quickly enough for Bashir not to notice the screening of the ponderous looking Cardassian sprawled on the operating table.

"What's this?" Bashir frowned in mild curiosity. "Gul Dukat? Why Dukat?"

"I think it's more that he's Cardassian," Sorge explained as the image vanished along with that of Janice. "A little experiment in verifying the effects of ryetalyn antibodies on various DNA strains. Your medical banks are ample in their supply of Bajoran and Human samples; somewhat restricted in its offer of Cardassian or Klingon. Dukat seemed like a good model as any for my purpose, what with his information being more extensive than most others; doubt if he'd mind either way."

Bashir smiled. "Well, if he's anything like his father, I'd have to agree. I had the same idea, as a matter of fact. Your little experiment?" he clarified as Sorge looked him over as if he had quite clearly lost his mind in suggesting Dukat, or any Cardassian, for that matter, would ultimately be found accountable; which they would not be. "The effects of ryetalyn antibodies on a host of DNA strains? Daresay your efforts proved as worthless as my own?"

"Have they?" Rebecca Sorge added her inquiry to the record. 

"Depends on what you deem as worthless," Sorge replied. "The chemical distortion I lay to elevated levels of ryetalyn in tissue and other samples taken from Lange, also suggest a possible doubt in determining the presence of O'Brien's DNA to be a conclusive case of rape, rather than introduced by some other method or means."

"It does?" Bashir blinked. "I mean, it clearly does? That was my determination. Concerned that I may have just been reading something into the analysis -- "

"I said possible doubt, Doctor," Sorge cautioned. "Not reasonable. Alongside the other evidence I've just begun sifting through it's not much on which to try and build a case."

"No, but it's something," Bashir scrambled for his desk to begin downloading the profile to wave as precisely that; evidence. "Until now there's been absolutely nothing -- unless one believes in the boasts of Advocate Ch'Pok."

"Who?" Sorge said, more in an effort to shrug away the entranced gaze of his wife.

"Why, haven't you ever heard of him?" Bashir teased. "None other than Gowron's finest. Self-appointed legal counselor to Chief O'Brien -- that's where I was. In conference with the Chief's lawyer, my jaw gaping right along with the rest of us, I'm not ashamed to say…yes, here it is," the chemical profile finally loaded onto the screen. "Take that, Magistrate T'Lar. If you've doubts to Ch'Pok's claims, and who could blame you if you have, what do you say about this?" He was gone five minutes later wishing Sorge the best of continuing good luck while he brought, and explained, the results of the comparison medical analyses thus far to Sisko; he collided with Dax two steps outside the Infirmary on the Promenade.

"Oh, good," she grabbed him, preparing to thrust him into the turbolift, "I need you."

"Yes, well," Bashir said, startled only to find himself literally swept off his feet, "as much as I may have been wanting to hear that, right now, I'm afraid it's going to have to wait."

She let go of him immediately, as immediately he was apologizing for being needlessly crass, and being forgiven. To the extent that she was handing him her data padd that she apparently wished him to review and taking his in exchange; that was a mistake. Not her taking his log, what she handed him. A precise and unappetizing detailing of some rather base ritualistic shaming acts she had begun compiling.

"What is this, your dairy?" Bashir commented for some reason other than the thought entered his head, and that reason was probably that he found the subject as a whole disquieting. "Would think you had enough of this -- " She was already gone, not exactly in a flash, but she was certainly gone taking her data padd away from him and keeping his.

"Dax…" Bashir was after her on a fast race down the Promenade. Not really interested in demanding the right to read the degrading study, but certainly interested in retrieving his chemical analysis; she flung it at him. So he ended up spending ten minutes arguing, rather than spend it having to download the analysis again.

"It's not a competition, Julian," Dax said coldly.

"Competition?" he gaped at her. "Who said anything about a competition? I'm just saying I understand why you might be looking to psychiatric anthropology for answers, and, yes, a ritualistic connection could exclude the Chief as a viable suspect."

"I simply wanted your opinion."

"I understand that," he said, his voice growing strained, his hand slapping the padd in frustrated emphasis. "A medical opinion."

"You would know if Lange meets the criteria," she insisted.

"I understand that," he snapped. "I also understand I can't tell you if Lange's assault has any ritualistic imprint unless you let me review the data, do you understand that?"

Apparently not because she walked off again with her data padd. He let her go, assuming they'd pick up the discussion again some time later.

"Is that even true -- " Rebecca hated to accuse her husband of sixty years of intentionally lying to protect some Human who could very well be guilty. "Is it true, Tracy?" she demanded. "Look at me. Is there a doubt to O'Brien's involvement, or are you just saying that because you don't like the idea of some Cardassian sitting at your dinner table?"

"Potentially yes," he said.

"They'll rip that profile apart to prove you wrong, and you know it."

"Why?" he asked. "There's a hundred times the evidence to support the Federation charges against O'Brien."

"Why?" she said. "Because they will. Do you think you are the only one who will realize the distortion is an allergic reaction due to a lingering presence of Cardassian DNA?"

"A risk Anon takes and took," Sorge assured. "With O'Brien no more or less guilty than Anon for putting Janice in the position to be maimed by some animal, yes. Clearly the man, or men, who did that, is, or are animals. In the meantime," he reengaged Dukat's ungainly portrait. "Do you realize who that young man is?"

"Her fiancé," Rebecca insisted. "In our language. Husband, in his. Yes, I realize who that man is, and, no, I don't agree with it anymore than you do. Damn him to his hell and ours if he is deceiving her. Damn him to hell for putting her in the position, and, yes, damn him to hell if he is in any way accountable for what happened. But who I damn to hell most of all is the man who did this to her! Oh, Tracy," she implored, "if anyone needs anything from you, it's Janice who needs your protection, not your misplaced vengeance. What do you think is going to happen to her if they find out about her association with Anon? _That's_ what's going to happen to her," her cutting nod indicated the doorway to the Infirmary to the corridors beyond to the isolation suites. "What did happen to her and worse. Are you suggesting some Cardassian knows that better than you do? Well enough to stay away -- hopefully far and forever away from her?"

"Who's asking who to lie?" Sorge verified.

"I am," she said. "I'm asking you to lie by omission to the Federation and everyone else. If there's evidence to support O'Brien's innocence, look for it and find it someplace else. Not along the avenues that will implicate an intimate liaison with Dukat -- who's innocent, Tracy. He is innocent of _that."_

"How is Janice?" Sorge changed the subject to an extent. "Truthfully? How does she look? Feel? Am I prepared, or aren't I?"

Rebecca softened. Her eighty year old hand gently stroking his eighty-three year old face. "No, of course you're not prepared. Whoever is prepared? She's gone, Tracy. That brilliant young doctor you admired so ardently is gone." Tears brimmed in his eyes, or perhaps they brimmed in hers, clouding the definitions of her husband's features. "She's coherent. Quite coherent. There's much to be said for that. She's still beautiful?" she smiled. "But the eyes are different. A little distant perhaps? Too distant not to know something is either missing or lost? I found myself wondering once or twice if she was aware of that. Of something being different somehow, changed."

"Yes, yes, all right," Sorge patted her shoulder. "She's alive is what matters most. By some combined miracle of God and Bashir. I'm told the Cardassians prefer their mates to be docile anyway, as they prefer them to be domestic."

"Who told you that?" Rebecca's hand was on her hip.

"You did. In the middle of some lecture or other -- not this one. Some other one. You missed your calling. The same as Lange is destined to miss hers…it's all right," he nodded. "One of our traditional wedding vows include a line about for better or for worse. There's no saying the Cardassians don't have a similar one -- do they?"

"How do I know?" her hand walloped his tunic lovingly. 

"Just asking," he grunted. "There's no harm in asking."

"Come again?" O'Brien said. "Could you come again?" he requested looking from the round, moon face of Ch'Pok beaming down on him to the less effervescent one of Sisko.

"The decision is yours, Chief," Sisko repeated. "Advocate Ch'Pok is willing to offer his services to you as legal counselor."

"I got that part. I heard it -- oh, help me," O'Brien dropped back on the bench, covering his face with his hands. "Someone help me." It was too much. It was just too much. And now_ this?_ Ch'Pok? It was definitely too much. He started to laugh. He couldn't help himself. He laughed and laughed, and when he finished laughing Sisko was still standing there along with Ch'Pok. 

"I'm sorry," O'Brien apologized to Sisko. "But it's just -- it's just -- "

Yes. Sisko understood how it was. He turned to Ch'Pok. "If you could excuse us for a moment, Advocate."

"By all means." Ch'Pok was gracious in his exit, and he was grand.

O'Brien wasn't falling for it either way. "Ch'Pok? As in Ch'Pok?" The lawyer who _lost_ the Klingon bid for Worf's extradition to his home world; as in, did not win? Despite all his ardent efforts and hair-brained scheme?

"Yes," Sisko said.

"Oh, please," O'Brien fell back on his bench. "Tell me you believe him." He already knew Sisko didn't. What was there to believe?

"I'm not sure." Sisko could only say. "There has to be more to the equation."

"Of course there's more," O'Brien scoffed. "There's a lot more."

"All Klingon, yes," Sisko agreed. "In the meantime, Chief, there's also you."

Yeah, there was him. O'Brien sat there staring off into space. "What could he know? What could he know that I don't know -- that _you _don't know. Because believe me, I don't know anything."

Neither did Sisko really, other than he wasn't willing not to take a chance; any chance.

"Oh, yeah, right," O'Brien scoffed. "In the meantime I could still end up on Elba II."

"Is that your final word?"

"No, of course it's not my final word," O'Brien assured. "I'm just saying that's the way it could be…and so, yeah, I guess we'll find out. Won't we?"

"I imagine we will," Sisko agreed.

Magistrate T'Lar of the Federation had all the indications of being of a different opinion when she arrived promptly at 2100 to meet with Sisko and several of his senior staff together with the prisoner O'Brien and his Advocate Ch'Pok in the security conference room. Sisko remembered the stoic Vulcan officer who had presided over Worf's hearing as clearly as he remembered everything else. Her petite, slight, frame misleading in its suggestion that she could be lost or overlooked in a sea of giants stretching their power over hers. Her strength of will, a mind stronger still, empathy was not a word in T'Lar's vocabulary. Her cool logic had been cold and judgmental at times, startlingly faulty at others. Her strict doctrinal code occasionally inflicted with an undercurrent of intolerance. T'Lar carried that air now. Her memory as crisp as anyone else's. Advocate Ch'Pok had been a nuisance. Flagrant in his attempting to take control of her courtroom; logic dictated he would threaten such attempts again. She acknowledged her recollection of DS9 with the notification of how the last time she was aboard the station it was to preside over another extradition hearing. A different senior officer of Sisko's awaiting her judgment rather than this one, Engineer O'Brien. There was an accusation in the Magistrate's notice; a condemnation of Sisko and his staff.

A muttered "Okay…" slipped from between O'Brien's lips. Now that she brought it to his attention, he remembered Magistrate T'Lar as well; it wasn't fondly.

No fonder than Sisko. "That would have been Commander Worf, Magistrate, yes," he replied with an indicating nod of Mister Worf in attendance with Commander Dax, Constable Odo and Doctor Bashir; Major Kira had declined attending in deference to personally insuring the continued maximum security and comfort of Doctor Lange.

T'Lar was there to discuss O'Brien. She assumed her position of judge and jury at Odo's desk to hear and discuss the motions before her. "Chief Engineer O'Brien has been made aware of the charges against him?"

"Yes," Sisko said.

"Constable?" T'Lar was talking to Odo.

"That would be yes," Odo likewise agreed.

She still seemed unsatisfied. Her carved, unemotional features regarded O'Brien sitting before her. "As he understands the gravity?"

"I would have to say yes," Odo replied.

"To be sure he does," T'Lar apprised O'Brien. "Federation law requires the charged be informed violation of the interplanetary trusteeship system by a Starfleet officer to be a crime without defense. Simultaneous conviction of criminal charges imposed finds mandatory life internment without chance of parole at the Federation prison colony Elba II…Know," she elaborated for O'Brien's thorough and complete understanding, "that if the extradition order were to Vulcan, rather than the UFP, by Vulcan law, conviction would find the mandatory sentence imposed to be the penalty of death. We have no need to reevaluate legislation written to address archaic crimes of barbarism."

"Eh, heh," O'Brien answered. What else could he say that he hadn't said already; which was nothing? By order of his consul Ch'Pok, and in T'Lar's continued opinion as well.

"The claim of amnesia finds the court's determination of your entry of a plea of innocence to be one made without adequate defense," T'Lar moved on to inform Ch'Pok.

"Well, it may be inadequate alone -- " Bashir startled.

"An examination of the joint Federation and Bajoran investigation upholds reasonable belief of guilt," she aborted the interruption, "and dictates the defense motion for a hearing on the issue of extradition to be denied."

"If Madam Magistrate would please…" Ch'Pok set his attaché case down in front of her with a flourish.

"Adjustment to the plea to reflect one of insanity is not applicable to refuting an order of extradition, Advocate," she reminded coldly in anticipation.

"I anticipate no such adjustment to be necessary," Ch'Pok extended her a data padd. Sisko's interest flickered along with the blossoming attention of his staff.

T'Lar reviewed the padd for all of thirty seconds before an expressionless look up. "The court finds no relevancy."

Ch'Pok smiled. "If the court may, I am quite prepared to show much relevancy -- together with authenticity," he quickly added. "For the court to accept, or seek additional verification of its own…though quickly, Magistrate, I would require on my client's behalf. This matter of Chief O'Brien's internment has gone on far too long already."

"Indeed…" Sisko's intrigued step forward was accompanied by a reach for the padd. "If I may, Magistrate -- "

He may not, not just yet anyway. T'Lar kept the data padd and its contents to herself, accepting and reviewing Ch'Pok's list of witnesses. "Major Kira and Doctor Bashir stand ordered to appear as witnesses for the prosecution."

Ch'Pok graciously accepted the return of his padd but not the determination. "Motion is submitted for reconsideration. Major Kira and Doctor Bashir are vital to the defense."

"An opportunity to refute testimony exists upon cross examination, Advocate." 

His smile broadened with an indication of the data padd she retained. "An opportunity exists only if the court has decided to reconsider the motion for hearing."

Not bad. Odo nodded to himself. So far Ch'Pok showed the same promise he had shown early on in the Worf fiasco, with T'Lar showing the same potential for weakness; of course it was the ending that mattered; the outcome. And if it hadn't been for the efforts of Sisko, or those of himself…Odo's glance trailed over the Captain disinterested in the legal rhetoric and wanting to know just what was on that data padd, the same as Odo wanted to know. He put in his bid to find out. "While the prosecution is prepared for there to be a hearing, or for there not to be one, it clearly objects to any evidence being allowed without an opportunity for due review -- and dispute. I believe that is also Federation law."

Ch'Pok's smile spread to expose his teeth. "In respect to a trial, Constable. Federation admissibility laws are far broader in the instance of a hearing -- or in the conveyance of a Grand Assembly…" he extended a third data padd to T'Lar. "Motion of an adjustment is made to the request for a hearing to include that of a Grand Assembly in the matter of extradition and admissibility of all evidence -- "

"And inadmissibility," Odo said. "The court stands notified of the prosecution's intent to dispute allowing any information as evidence that has not been duly recorded and verified."

"The point of the Grand Assembly, Constable," T'Lar replied. "As would the time required to order the conveyance of an assembly be contrary to your request of expediency, Advocate," she alerted Ch'Pok.

"It would be," he happily agreed.

She studied the data padd. "Motion for that of a Grand Assembly is denied. The court reverses its decision of a hearing in favor of the defense."

"Yes!" Escaped O'Brien's clenched teeth. Sisko would second that; T'Lar did not look up.

"Without prejudice to the prosecution or defense, the court reserves the decision of admissibility of information as evidence until the time of hearing -- relevancy must be clearly shown first, Advocate, without undue implication or reference," she forewarned Ch'Pok, "for the court to consider allowance. Exceed the boundaries of this order and you, together with your client will be cited with the charge of contempt of court."

"Oh, now, wait a minute…" O'Brien's elation plummeted.

"Relax, Chief," Sisko cautioned.

"What do you mean relax?" he jumped up. "There could be anything on there. What's he care about contempt -- "

"That's an order!" Sisko's hand preempted Worf's to slam O'Brien back down in his seat. "Come to order!"

Yeah, right. Come to order. Before what? More damage was done? Like there hadn't been enough damage done already. O'Brien pushed his hair back off his forehead. The Vulcan Ice Princess clear in her disdain of him and Sisko for flouting the Federation's right to railroad him as they saw fit. Like he cared. Like the Chief even cared; he cared. He cared so much he would probably agree to Morn representing him.

"With all due respect, Magistrate," Sisko dared to use the word, "I request to review Advocate Ch'Pok's information before this, or any other debate continues."

Ch'Pok cleared his throat; Sisko glared at him. "With all due respect, Magistrate," he requested, "I request Captain Sisko's request be denied -- with all due respect, Captain," he reassured Sisko, "as Chief O'Brien's commanding officer, I wouldn't dream of accusing you of attempted tampering -- "

"Tampering?" Sisko choked.

"No more than I would dream of accusing my illustrious opponent, Constable Odo," Ch'Pok swore in oath. "But as the court can plainly see for itself the nature of the information is extraordinarily sensitive. Surely any undue or unwarranted exposure would be clearly inappropriate _prior_ to the court's decision of admissibility? Or relevancy?" he tempted T'Lar with a smile. "I doubt if even I can persuade the court to reconsider its decision now in favor of granting admissibility?"

"The decision of the court stands, Advocate," T'Lar stood up, data padd in hand. "Relevancy must be clearly demonstrated first. Until that time the court is obligated to declare the circulation of any information not duly recognized as evidence among any member of the defense or prosecution to be a flagrant attempt to prejudice the hearing's outcome, thereby undermining the sanctity of the court -- your request to review the data padd is denied, Captain Sisko, together with Constable Odo's motion."

"As would I never dream, Magistrate," Ch'Pok preempted her from securing the data padd in her attaché case rather than returning it to him, "of accusing the Federation et al of seeking an opportunity to tamper or destroy -- "

T'Lar looked at him; the slant of her finely drawn Vulcan brows arched in scorn. Ch'Pok was ready with his smile. "Nor to suggest the defense has any objections to granting the court sufficient opportunity to conduct its own determination of authenticity within the parameters of acceptable confidentiality and discretion."

T'Lar snapped her attaché shut; the data padd secured within. "The court recognizes the defense's intent to cite claims of attempted contamination or conspiracy in the event the Federation's analysis poses any question contrary to the Klingon claim of no adulteration."

"Federation claim Magistrate," Ch'Pok nodded. "As appointed counselor for Chief O'Brien, in this matter, I am as Federation as you. I foresee no differences or questions to arise between the results of our two analyses."

"The time of hearing is scheduled for 0900 the day after tomorrow," T'Lar ordered. "It is the court's will that Doctor Lange be in attendance, Constable. Chief O'Brien has the right to face his accuser."

"Yes, well," Odo said, "for the record, O'Brien's accuser is the Federation, the same as his defense. On behalf of the Neutral Doctor Lange, nevertheless…" he had his own data padd held ready. "Insofar as Lange's ability to appear, I will need to verify the feasibility with Doctor Bashir."

"I should say," Bashir blinked.

"By 2200 tomorrow, Constable," T'Lar ignored Bashir. "Advocate Ch'Pok is to be granted time for any necessary adjustments to his platform."

Odo nodded. "It's reasonable to presume if Lange is able to appear, it will be in attendance with appropriate medical personnel."

"Not excluding Counselor Rebecca Sorge," Bashir insisted. "Damn anyone's right to confront anyone. Doctor Lange's rights include the right not to be further traumatized."

"To that end," Odo extended T'Lar his data padd. "If the court wouldn't mind reviewing my list of witnesses with its motion to refute the court's right to reverse the order of the Supreme Assembly by citing those previously mandated as witnesses for the prosecution to now appear as witnesses for the defense -- except in the instances of Captain Sisko or the Cardassian delegation," he granted. "Captain Sisko is Chief O'Brien's commanding officer. The prosecution respects his right to act as assistant defense council in the matter of the criminal charges posed against his officer. As far as the Cardassian delegation…yes, well," Odo grunted, "the prosecution is unaware of anyone ordering Damar or his representatives to appear anywhere on the behalf of anyone. That's the defense's idea solely. Who knows or cares why. Damar isn't involved. Can't be shown or proven to be involved without substantial adulteration of the facts, regardless of how much someone may want him to be involved; which, admittedly probably quite a lot of us do, or at least would far prefer it if he was. Additionally," he assured, "the prosecution anticipates any time soon the only thing Legate Damar is going to be requesting of anyone is clearance for the Tir to embark."

"To the contrary, Constable," T'Lar said, "Emperor Damar has agreed to abide by his Council's wishes that he remain aboard DS9 until the Threat Force has been satisfactorily identified to be Chief O'Brien acting alone; in turn removed from the station by Federation security marshals."

"I beg your pardon?" Sisko's cheeks pinched tightly under their darkened flush of anger. "To reiterate what Legate Damar has already been informed -- by myself! This matter, not now, or ever, has given any indication to be of any concern or interest to the Cardassian delegation whatsoever." 

"It is the consensus of the Cardassian Civilian Council, Captain," T'Lar said, "together with Central Command, and the Federation Supreme Assembly, the severity of this latest security breech mandates absolute certainty that no further threat exists to any member of the conference delegation prior to departure; this is only logical. Emperor Damar's safe return to Cardassia Prime must be guaranteed. Central Command is en route to secure the Cardassian delegation. The Defiant stands ordered to act as escort of the Tir to the border of Cardassian Space, and will be held accountable."

"To repeat!" Sisko said.

"If not suggest Damar's envoy had better not cross the border," Dax's mutter found Odo.

"Hm," Odo was concentrating on Ch'Pok, thinking about that data padd and all it might have to offer. "If not hint there might be a Cardassian connection, after all."

"Hint?" Dax said.

"What have we been thinking?" Odo agreed.

T'Lar was thinking of nothing except salvaging the Federation-Cardassian Peace negotiations and the convenience of hanging O'Brien. "With the order of a hearing into the matter of extradition, Emperor Damar may wish to correspond with his government for their recommendation concerning the timeliness of his departure; which he may wish to postpone until the hearing verdict. This would be the Federation's recommendation as well. The court leaves you to discuss his options with the Emperor freely, Captain, together with Advocate Ch'Pok's suggestion of either Emperor Damar or his representatives agreeing to witness for the defense."

"Only in the most informal manner of helping to assist with the correct setting of the stage, Magistrate," Ch'Pok promised. "Only in the most informal manner."

"Stage is a logical choice of word, Advocate," she imparted, handing Sisko Odo's padd and exited.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Sisko stood there in the security conference room, Bashir and his reports to the right of him, Odo and his reports to his left; Dax and Worf silent and somewhere behind him. "Do your best, Odo," he said. "Because, damn it all, I intend to do mine." No offense to Doctor Lange and her trauma because clearly, yes, something had happened to the young woman. As clearly someone was responsible. He just simply could not believe it was the Chief unless he witnessed the man himself! The padd in Sisko's hand cracked under the pressure of his grip.

"Don't know your own strength," Bashir mentioned jokingly to ease the frosty air, not meaning to imply anything; it was a poor choice of words nevertheless.

"Your best no doubt includes soliciting the cooperation of Damar," Odo retrieved his padd from Sisko. 

"As yours includes the solicitation of me," Bashir interjected, alive and fighting, and brandishing his Hippocratic oath. "Out of the question. Are you out of your mind?" he cited Ch'Pok. "Doctor Lange is in no more condition to be interviewed at this time, than she is in any way capable of being forced to stand in witness."

"Appearance," Odo corrected. "Can see no reason for Lange being obligated to be called as witness for any reason -- is she?" he demanded of Ch'Pok. "She's not the one on trial, O'Brien is."

"Hearing, Constable," Ch'Pok smiled. "And no. I can foresee no reason to require Doctor Lange to take the stand -- A sworn deposition would be sufficient for our needs, Doctor," he promised Bashir. "Any request for Doctor Lange's appearance, as Magistrate T'Lar has emphasized, is solely to insure she is extended her full rights under the law -- she may have an interest in seeing justice carried out. Has she even been asked?"

"No," Bashir's voice was tight. "Doctor Lange is unaware of any proceedings. As she is currently unaware of the reasons why any proceedings would be in the offing."

"Details as to why perhaps, Doctor," Ch'Pok amended the claim. "Not reasons. Surely Doctor Lange is aware she has been injured by a member or members of some Threat Force?"

"Which, speaking of," Odo nodded.

"Indeed," Sisko confronted Ch'Pok. "Be advised, Advocate, that if I find your platform to include the identification of a Threat Force allowed in the interim to continue unchallenged, potentially jeopardizing all or any resident of this station, it will not be contempt of court you find hanging over your head. Is that clear?"

"Most assuredly, Captain," he said. "As it's likely our best argument for securing Legate Damar's assistance, however minor, in helping to identify the correct responsible party, or parties, obviously still at large."

"Which they had better not even hint of Klingon orchestration!" Sisko was in the Advocate's face.

"No more Klingon, than Chief O'Brien is responsible, Captain," Ch'Pok purred. "Unfortunately, I am not as confident we won't find the fault of Doctor Lange's assault not to be connected in some way to this conference issue; obviously it must be one or the other. Either personal or politically motivated; a rare instance indeed would find it both."

"Otherwise known as Maquis," Odo muttered to Dax.

"Or some other equally deluded radical left, Constable," Ch'Pok smiled. "Who, yes, have a tendency to embrace their politics rather personally."

"Right," Odo corrected. "Extremist conservative right, in their opinion. The base of your platform could stand from a little homework. Maquis doctrine has always accused the Federation treatise with Cardassia of flying in the face of convention; a convention they intended to uphold."

"If you insist," Ch'Pok shrugged. "The Empire holds to a different view."

"Yes, well, the Empire falls into the category of extreme right," Odo nodded to Sisko. "Not that Damar doesn't. Good luck. You'll need it." About as much as he would need the same amount of luck in persuading Bashir. "Well?"

"Well, what?" Bashir huffed.

"Barring my ignorance of the appropriate etiquette of psychological counseling and Humans, it wouldn't hurt to add Lange's account to the record. Doesn't have to be me she speaks to, it can be Major Kira under supervision of yourself and Rebecca Sorge. As, and if the Captain has no objections, I can see no harm in Major Kira being in attendance with you and Sorge throughout his interview."

"None at all, Constable," Sisko assured. "No more than I can see a reason to exhaust Doctor Lange when one interview should suffice. The only interest I have is in ascertaining if Doctor Lange has anything of value to add to the record, either by some degree of recollection of her assault, or of some other event prior."

"I doubt it," Bashir insisted. "Highly. But I will discuss with Rebecca the feasibility of Janice submitting to an interview some time tomorrow."

"It would be appreciated, Doctor," Sisko's nod was for Dax and Worf. "Until then, if you would see to the Chief's return -- "

"To his cell," O'Brien stood up. "Right. To his cell. I'm still here, remember? And may I say thanks for the moving show of support -- especially yours," he singled out Odo, who you couldn't convince him, wasn't enjoying his assigned role, regardless of what he claimed to the contrary.

Odo was, in all honesty enjoying his assignment quite a lot. Just not for the reason of condemning the Chief to a life as roommate to Cardassia's former Emperor Dukat in that Federation prison for the criminally insane. "It's called order; justice. The preservation thereof. With which I'm sure your Federation will agree, mandates no one is above the law; as in no one. Any other questions?"

No. The Chief left under escort of Worf and Dax.

"Yes, well," Bashir felt obliged to advise Odo, "I wouldn't take the Chief's hostility to heart."

"I don't," Odo assured for reasons other than he didn't have a heart; not as an organ, anyway. 

"Quite," Bashir smiled. "As chances are the Chief will be far angrier with me when he finds out I've notified Keiko; she's en route from Earth with the children. It will be a week or more naturally before she arrives, as it may not be here, but rather the UFP, if the Chief does end up being extradited for trial."

"That was presumptuous of you, Doctor," Sisko found his voice to comment.

"Was it?" Bashir said. "In my opinion it's rather presumptuous of the Chief to think he can somehow avoid telling his wife. Keiko is his wife, after all. Firm in her belief Miles can't be anything but innocent. That ought to make someone happy," his smile flashed before he left. "I know it does me."

"Have I missed something, gentlemen?" Ch'Pok inquired of the look passing between Sisko and Odo.

"No," Odo drawled. "Not according to you. We'll see though, won't we?"

If O'Brien had laughed upon Ch'Pok's appearance in his isolation cell, Damar laughed even harder upon the Advocate's appearance in his quarters; Sisko and the Changeling Odo at the Klingon's side. Damar laughed, and laughed. Offering a reasonable and fair amount of arguments and accusations, insults and threats, in tune with Sentinel Tan's somewhat more boisterous accompaniment. When it was all over, about twenty minutes, the only thing Damar would concede to considering was corresponding with his government for their opinion of this latest joint Federation-Bajoran conspiracy to whitewash the whole affair. There was something to be said however for that ancient Earth expression of 'he who laughs last' especially if the mirthless howl breaks into a shrewd smile once safely again behind closed doors; out of sight and hearing of the Federation and the Klingon Ch'Pok.

"A Cardassian fleet?" Damar gloated to the flustered and frustrated Tan. "En route? Should I be flattered or agog? I wouldn't say it's his father's arrogance Dukat embraces, but his insanity. The more he attempts to create a reason for staying, the greater the risk he takes at revealing what he hopes to conceal. Don't say I didn't warn him -- or you. Your mutiny will no more go unchallenged by Central Command than Dukat's pandering."

Tan shoved Damar out of his way with a snarl, leaving the Emperor in the competent attendance of two sentries while he informed the Gul of this latest twist in events.

"His words are noted and accurate," Anar was not of a mind to dismiss Damar's threats of Anon's inevitable exposure and expulsion so lightly. Unfortunately neither was he really of the mind to attempt to encourage Anon to heed them. The secured reports of Janice's condition were horrifying as they were enraging. The Federation's continued persecution of O'Brien suggesting to Anar only that Hawk had covered his tracks well. "Some choice," he acknowledged to Anon.

"Choice?" Anon said coldly. "I am not leaving without Janice. Who cares what the Klingons know, don't know, think they do."

"All. Or part. Or nothing," Anar agreed. "As it continues to be unlikely Janice will be in any condition to leave without Bashir."

"Then we don't leave without Bashir either," he insisted. "The Federation is satisfied with O'Brien, I am satisfied."

"Settling for O'Brien perhaps," Anar replied calmly. "That doesn't change O'Brien's innocence to guilt. The Federation's method of justice is to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt by trial, not simply sentencing of the guilty with an explanation to the reasons why behind the crime." 

Anon ignored what he couldn't understand about the Federation's legal system anyway. "What do you want me to do? Wait? Yes! Two days more for the fleet to arrive and that's it."

"Well, it's as grand an escort as any," Anar supposed though his colony was the long way home to Cardassia Prime, with Anon's flight plan likely to raise its own series of questions from all the wrong directions; the Klingons among them.

Anon's chin jutted forward. "I am assuming the responsibility of returning the Neutral representative to her colony. That's the only answer anyone has to be given. They don't like it, too bad."

"What the UFP will likely suspect," Anar corrected, "is a Cardassian attempt to act upon its apparent suspicion of a surviving Maquis faction along the ring of outer colonies separating our borders; a suspicion true or false, and every intent of finding out. They'll stop the fleet in any event, Anon. Sian and I will find our own way home; we found it here. The issue is more the untimely disappearance of Doctors Bashir and Lange, and what you plan to do with Bashir after the fact? When Janice is not returned to the colony, but with you to Cardassia Prime? Where Bashir will sit in attendance until Janice is well? Debrief him? The Cardassian way?"

"What do you suggest instead?" Anon waited, his temper burning.

Anar tested a glance Tan's direction first. "Leave Janice here on Terok Nor in Bashir's care."

"No." Anon's refusal was immediate. 

"Until she is well enough to travel and in no further need of medical treatment -- Janice needs Bashir because she's Human, Anon," he reminded. "Whatever scientific data Central Command has accumulated over fifty years of Occupation; Janice is Human, not Bajoran. As marked a difference between us and her, as there is between you and I. As do I swear by the Prophets, I will see to Janice's safe return to the colony, giving time for all tempers to cool, and time as well for you to make arrangements to secure her…

"As would I," he sighed, knowing he was talking to a wall, one that would either decide to listen of his own volition or decide not to, "guard myself and my answers well if by chance you are called upon to give testimony come Saturday and the engineer's hearing."

"Hearing," Anon sneered. "Hearing, trial -- they have the evidence, I don't care how many times they want to talk about it. What makes you think O'Brien will live to see his extradition? Never mind anyone else live past the airlocks of Terok Nor?"

Anar looked into him, deeply. Down into the depths of the hatred as desperate as the Federation to blame the first available in an effort to purge itself of any responsibility. He could hear the Prophets words…_feelings of guilt show conscience, as conscience becomes all_…

His own voice spoke out above theirs, "The same faith that has me believing you will see through the blindfold covering your eyes, never mind anyone else having to see through the one covering theirs."

It was moment before Anon answered, turning on his heel for the console. "Don't count on it."

Anar smiled. "I, my young friend, have had little choice but to count on it since the first hour we met."

More words incomprehensible to Anon. As incomprehensible as the ones talking about justice, associative brain functions, neuro transducers and stimulators keeping Janice moving and alive. He had this image of a Borg in his mind; the implants external. That was what he expected to see when he saw her; that was what they had done to his wife -- _O'Brien_ had done to his wife. Who knew why. The answer sure to be found somewhere in the word Federation. He reset his transmission to the UFP. "The fleet crosses the border, that's it. No asking. No stopping. Not Klingons, or anyone," his grin lit up suddenly with the feeling of his brother's presence coming to rest at his side. "The Emperor must be protected. What do you think? O'Brien, not O'Brien. That's the Federation's problem, not ours. Ours is the safety of Damar. That's what Dukat would say, right? That's what he would howl. Well, that's what I'm going to do," he assured. "Learn how to do."

As his father had learned at some point; likely moments after birth rather than waiting twenty-four years to perfect his whine. The soul of the child Ziyal had returned, standing with her brother at his console. It wasn't the presence of Pfrann Anon thought he felt, nor who he believed he continued talking to without once looking up. The tale of the Cardassian transport _Ravinok_ floated through Anar's mind with its largely fictionalized account of the Bajoran Tora Naprem and her daughter Ziyal by the dictator Dukat. Nothing but woe and misery beset the Cardassian Prefect who attempted to bow, however ungainly, to the constraints of propriety. Endeavoring to keep his unlawful lover protected and hidden, only to lose her first to an unkind fate, then his daughter, and finally his own sanity. Anar no more believed that particular version of the muddied truth than the bulk of the universe believe it, or Dukat's own, eldest son. Anon simply unwilling to take the same chances with Janice that his father claimed not to have any choice in taking with Naprem.

"He will reach a sensible decision," Tan's large head lowered itself to speak confidently in Anar's ear, interpreting Anon's one-sided conversation with himself to be an attempt at just that.

"Yes," Anar maintained his belief in Anon's integrity. "I would be prepared however," he prophesied, "for sensible to be a matter of opinion. I doubt if Anon will deny Janice, or leave her behind."

Tan answered after a reasonable time. "Then we will not deny her."

Anar looked at him. The giant shrugged in wisdom and resignation that all the arguments in the universe wouldn't, couldn't necessarily change everything; his explanation for that inexplicable phenomenon succinct. "Some things just are."

Like the Klingon raktajino in the commissary aboard the Tir. A favorite of the imperfect daughter Ziyal perhaps? Or Dukat no doubt at some point anticipating a confrontation with Chancellor Gowron? Hopes and a life that were not destined to come to pass. The former Prefect's reign over his own world one of the shortest in Cardassian history; the daughter, dead. Anar watched the troubled soul of the child Ziyal; her mottled and damned face saddened by her brother's pain. Tan was silent. Oblivious as everyone else to their vigilant visitor who lifted her eyes only once from her brother to catch Anar's; he looked away. 

Sisko's attention was on the task at hand, not what he might see when he met with Major Kira in Lange's isolation chamber; Doctors Bashir and Sorge in as closely guarded attendance as Kira. A confused, apprehensive whisper of a young woman, perhaps; Lange? It was true Sisko scarcely recognized Janice sitting stiffly in a comfortable armchair. The image of frailty enhanced by the snarled mass of long brown hair and single neuro monitor with its steady green light fixed in place on her right temporal bone.

"What are you saying?" she threatened to unnerve him with her slow to sudden understanding of his carefully worded questions. "Chief O'Brien did this to me? Why would he do this to me?"

It was beyond him. If it was beyond him before, it was certainly beyond his comprehension now.

"Oh, but he didn't," her denial was frightened and lacking certainty; her eyes darting between him and Kira. "He couldn't."

Kira was cold and rigid under her smile, her hand helping Lange to push her hair out of her eyes shaking slightly in anger, not nervousness. "Captain Sisko is trying to find out why. We talked about that, remember?"

Which the young woman might, yes, if they didn't inadvertently aid in her confusion by cloistering her behind their flutter of protective hands and whispers all talking at once. Sisko's glance sought Counselor Sorge. Her field of expertise ineffective alongside Kira's power, control, absolute authority and command. Sisko stood up.

"She's exhausted," Bashir hastened to explain Lange's inability to focus long enough to cooperate.

"Noticeably distracted, yes," Sisko said, "by the four of us."

"Well, yes," Bashir agreed. "That's what I've attempted to explain. It's not even been -- "

"Two days," Sisko said. "Reasonable, Doctor, her physical status. In the meantime the cuts and the bruises have been treated and cleaned; the child's body will mend. As will their injured emotions and yours, given a chance to."

"What?" Bashir said.

"Jake," Sisko tipped his head; the analogy in reference to his son. Once an infant, and now a young man nearing twenty years old. "There's nothing more elating than their first steps, nothing more terrifying than their first fall -- which, God forbid!" he swore with a father's emphasis, "it ever happen again. Which it won't, not if you have anything to say about it. Which you do have everything and nothing to say about it; I've been there, Doctor. And somewhere back there, I not only had to pick Jake up, I had to somehow find the courage to set him back down and allow him to try again, with risk of it happening all over again."

"Well, yes, I understand what you're saying, but, no, I hardly agree. Janice is not a child; certainly not my child. It isn't the same -- "

"It's the same," Sisko stopped him. "A choice you've had to face and make with the thousands of patients before Lange, a choice you will face and make again in the thousands who will come after. Few, I grant you, more obviously innocent. Obviously a victim -- "

"A tragedy, yes," Bashir insisted. "Utterly."

"And few," Sisko stressed his point, "ever given the opportunity of a second chance. Don't rob her of her miracle, Doctor, in other words."

"Oh," Bashir said.

"Yes," Sisko nodded.

"Oh, well, with that, yes, I certainly agree."

"Yes," Sisko had a feeling he would.

"And, yes, you're right, actually. You're absolutely right, as a matter of fact."

"I've been there, Doctor," Sisko nodded, "as I've said."

"Yes, you certainly have. And there's more truth to your analogy than you might suspect. Actually it isn't me really who's insisting upon treating Janice as if she were little more than a child; it's Kira," Bashir disclosed. First in the manner of an embarrassed confession of his own near impotence alongside Kira's fierce, at times brash, defined as rude, approach. Proceeding on with a tone of confidential discretion in an attempt to analyze for Sisko's understanding why Kira might be behaving the way she was behaving, never mind why, or how, anyone else might behaving -- it didn't matter. Sisko had a headache when he walked into Lange's hospital room, Bashir insuring he had a headache when he left with the addendum of Lange having wanted to have a conference with Kira the night of her assault.

"A conference?" Sisko halted in the corridor with a frown, recalling Dax had made mention of Kira's scheduled meeting with Lange. 

"During the time of her assault," Bashir had followed him out. "I'm not sure what exactly it may mean, if it means anything. Other than Janice does remember -- with Kira's prompting -- of wanting to schedule the appointment with Kira for 1800, not 1900 which apparently ended up to be the agreed time. Unfortunately, however, Janice simply can't remember why, or what about. I know it's right around the time the Chief left the bar, if not precisely the very time the Chief left the bar. But, again, what that might mean, if it means anything at all?"

"A conference," Sisko continued to frown.

"Mysterious, isn't it?" Bashir agreed. "Surely it had to be about something… Daresay, I hope for the Chief's sake it wasn't anything to do with some sort of overture he may have made; who knows?"

"I would," Sisko assured. "While I may have been oblivious, Doctor, to however many private conversations the Chief may have had with you, Garak, Quark, or Commander Dax, concerning Doctor Lange, I would have noticed any 'overture' however subtle."

"Subtle," Bashir smiled, pondering that. "There's an interesting word. I'm not sure how many people have ever accused Miles Edward O'Brien of being subtle; I know I certainly haven't, probably never will."

"It would be a facetious twist to the pot calling the kettle black," Sisko agreed.

"What?" Bashir said.

Sisko nodded. "That could probably be said about most of us, Doctor, in jest."

"Well, yes, it could certainly be said about Major Kira…" Bashir mumbled in agreement as Sisko turned away, and he turned to walk back inside. "I'm not so sure about in jest…or how many teeth one would have left even if it were said only in jest…Hello!" he beamed a bright and cheery greeting to Janice. "Well, that certainly was a bit of excitement, wasn't it?"

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

The round table in the center of the main amphitheater was gone, replaced by two long, coldly rectangular tables, one for the prosecution and the other for the defense. The two sides sharply divided by the center aisle between them and the rings of audience seats behind them that were largely empty except for the immediate row behind each opposing side. Damar and his duo of representatives and squad of sentries chose to cluster in the first seats that caught the Legate's eye as he came down the aisle; it was the side of the prosecution. A few comfortable rows behind Bashir, Kira and the Sorges behind Odo and Lange at the table, and much too uncomfortably close for Quark.

"I don't like this…" Quark muttered under his breath as the Cardassians clanged in to file six and respectively seven across in the two rows directly opposite his one. "I am really beginning to not like this…thirteen's an unlucky number. It's an unlucky number, ask anyone."

"Well, not like…" Garak swallowed back the natural nervousness anyone would feel having to potentially bear witness against a man they all believed they knew, while having all these other thoughts and knowledge of persons they hardly knew at all, and yet knew so much about.

"Go on," Quark said. "Tell me what's to like. I dare you, tell me what's to like."

"Relax," Leeta chided. "They don't know anything unless you tell them; that's what Garak means."

"No, my dear," Garak slowly shook his head, still trying desperately to read between the lines; all of them. There were so many of them by this point, with good indications of there being more. "No, that isn't what Garak means… necessarily. But a good and general rule to live by, yes. That is a good and general rule to live by." 

"Family of the groom, family of the bride," Bashir made some inane remark to Kira warming the seat beside him. "Sorry, it's me. I'm nervous -- aren't you nervous?" Determined, possibly. Undisturbed by the prospect of having to bear witness against the Chief. Kira got up at one point just prior to the swearing in ceremony to sit down next to Lange about as frail and pale and nervous looking as one would expect; a brief, noticeable pause in Janice's focused anxiety with the appearance of Damar.

"It's all right," Kira's hand touched hers, Rebecca Sorge leaning over to whisper the same. "The hearing is closed; it's closed."

Closed. Now that was an interesting presumption in Bashir's opinion. What looked empty in its vastness, was not empty. Fifty Federation and Bajoran Special Forces surrounded every plausible entrance and exit of the amphitheater. More importantly beside Garak, Rom, Leeta and Morn, comfortable themselves a few rows behind Worf and Dax immediately behind the Chief, Ch'Pok and Sisko, Quark sat on the side of the defense; closed was not the word. Bashir could hear the dull ch-ching of latinum exchanging hands now; a profit waiting to be made, the Chief's story far too good to let lie in waste.

"A bit cynical, are we?" Sorge commented, crossing his legs in boredom.

"Oh, yes, sorry," Bashir apologized. "Hadn't realized I'd spoken aloud."

"You haven't," Sorge grunted. "Other than that nonsense about families and brides."

"Oh, yes, well, it is rather like it, isn't it? The arrangement of it?"

"Court's court," Sorge found no comparison to a wedding beyond that.

"Yes," Bashir agreed. "Precisely what I mean; the arrangement. Two sides with some judicial dignitary or another commanding center stage…" his gaze turned forward to the vacant witness stand waiting and facing them a respectable distance from the prosecution table. The judicial bench set down in its familiar position next to it with a second witness stand waiting ready for use to the judge's right, forward of the defense. For the purpose of potential dual and simultaneous cross examination? Bashir guessed. Or simply a matter of convenience? With the witnesses from either side not having to travel too far, their respective and opposing Advocates instead having to be the ones to suffer and bear the emotional stress of penetrating each other's territory, all while maintaining and holding their own?

"It's certainly far removed," Bashir sighed. "Quite far removed from the symbolism of a round table; outright hostile."

"Thinking of being hostile?" Sorge questioned.

"Well, no," Bashir frowned. "How did you -- "

"That time you did speak aloud," Sorge nodded.

"Oh," Bashir said. "Well, yes, obviously I must have," he smiled. "Somewhat absurd to suggest telepathy -- "

"Somewhat worthless," Sorge grunted.

"On a Klingon, you mean," Bashir obligingly stood up along with the rest of them with the entrance of T'Lar and her appointed deputy; a solemn Vulcan male with starched, black hair. "Yes, that's certainly true. It's more than the mind's ability, it's whether or not one has the stomach for it; few do, I rather suspect."

"No, that's not what I mean," Sorge corrected. "What I mean is the ability to obtain knowledge doesn't change anything; not a fact."

"We'll see, won't we?" Bashir raised his right hand in oath. "My facts say the Chief is guilty, it's just me who can't believe it…Never will," he glanced across the divide to Dax. Certain she was having the same difficulty as he was with all of this even though her intensive study of barbaric culture practices proved as inclusive in being able to exonerate the Chief as his chemical analyses.

"What manner of nonsense is this?" Damar's grumble was clearly audible behind him. 

"Humor us, Legate," Ch'Pok beseeched with a sly grin; the Advocate primed and dressed for the occasion with his split-breast tunic and traditional sleeveless vestment brushing the floor. "It's a Federation tradition; once swearing not to lie, one, of course, won't lie."

"It's a waste of time," Damar insisted. "If the Human isn't guilty, why are we even here?"

"Oh, well, actually," Bashir turned around to the explain one of the finer points of Federation justice, but he caught a glimpse of Sisko and thought the better of it.

"Also a Federation tradition," Odo took over defining the premise of innocent until proven guilty with a sharp nod for the waiting deputy. "Yes, we swear; have already. Let's get on with it. Presuming the defense has a few opening remarks, I shouldn't have to file a motion to hear them."

T'Lar's face said "try it". Her mouth said "Advocate?" And so it was already not her courtroom, but Odo's. Ch'Pok's. Sisko's.

"By all means," the Advocate promptly removed his vestment for better freedom of movement, took two or three of steps away from his table and faced his audience with a warm, preparative rub of his hands. "In the matter of the UFP versus Chief Engineer Miles Edward O'Brien -- "

"He got it right," Odo sat down with a grunt for Kira staunchly stationed to Lange's right.

She was silent. Ch'Pok elaborating on about the defense's intent to show to the court's satisfaction, O'Brien's innocence, and the unequivocal fact that the Chief was as much a victim as Lange herself.

"Oh, please," Kira turned her head.

"That didn't take long," Odo agreed in time with T'Lar's gavel calling for order.

"He's not a victim!" Kira jumped up. "She's a victim! Look at her! _Look_ at her!"

"Major!" Sisko ordered as they all obediently looked at Lange with her head bent and her hands clasped, mute and staring down on the table.

"I'm sitting," Kira sat with a comforting pat of Lange. "Don't listen to them. Don't pay any attention to anything they say -- you did nothing. He did. _He_ did."

"Or someone did," Odo agreed.

"Prove it," Kira challenged.

To the contrary, Odo was there to prove O'Brien guilty. The former was Ch'Pok's job as stated and now reiterated with the accompanying clarification: "A victim of an audacious plot to disrupt the Bajoran-Cardassian conference…As much a victim, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, as Doctor Lange herself, oh, yes."

"Yes, well, there's no jury," Odo stood up in formal objection to the minutes being distorted.

"A figure of speech, so noted, Constable," T'Lar granted.

"Truth, Magistrate," Ch'Pok corrected her. "The truth. Chief O'Brien sits under judgment of his peers; a jury by any other name. So evident by Major Kira's outburst -- and wasn't that the idea?" he turned back to the audience. "The idea of Chief O'Brien's assailants? To demean the Federation representative? Embarrass, entrap, dishonor, destroy, _cause_ a third victim? Oh, yes, a _third victim_, ladies and gentlemen," his voice and accompanying finger rose. "_Three_ victims…"

"Lange and Dukat," Odo identified for Kira the apparent two other victims of the audacious scheme.

"I know who he's talking about it," she said.

"Yes, well, implying, perhaps, inferring…" Odo rose to his feet again in preparation of reiterating the prosecution's demand for clarity.

"Surviving victims, I should say, Constable," Ch'Pok preempted him. "The unfortunate demise of the Cardassian assistant Mister Paq at the hands of the Threat Force is so noted for the record…And not without value…" he returned to enlightening the public, "as we travel back …not to Wednesday and the evening of Doctor Lange's assault, but back. To that first fateful evening at Quark's and the assault upon Mister Paq and Gul Dukat. It is here we must begin our efforts to unravel this intricate and monstrous plot together…" he smiled again, suddenly. "Examining step by step the events leading up to my client's assault…With the able assistance of reports…" he secured his data padd to wave in demonstration. "Captain Sisko and Chief Constable Odo…and the first hand knowledge and experience of Gul Anon Dukat…The defense calls upon Gul Dukat to be its first witness to assist us in determining the facts of that evening…

"For the sanctity of the record, Magistrate, of which my illustrious Constable Odo seems to be most preoccupied…" Ch'Pok was turning around to impress his smile and reasoning upon T'Lar. His closing already being drowned out in a muttered chorus of incredulous "whats?" sharp intakes of startled breath, and registered protests; Dukat's not among them, not that Odo heard; Damar's he heard.

"Out of the question! What could Dukat possibly tell you?" the Legate roared in challenge to T'Lar's deadpan "So ordered".

"Among other things who stabbed him," Odo grunted to Kira attempting to grip the smooth surface of the table in her fists. "Among other things," he suddenly ogled Lange; he wasn't quite sure why. She was nervous, obviously. When they walked in and while they sat. Further unnerved with Ch'Pok's unemotional listing of the charges and the reasons why, and now suddenly relaxed. The tension easing in her shoulders, neck, and upper back.

"Out of the question…Out of the bloody question…" Bashir was on his feet behind Odo. "You'll not turn this into a three ring circus invoking witnesses and rehashing details that even I know are utterly irrelevant except for making good show. I simply won't allow it. The woman has been terrorized enough. Dukat couldn't possibly have anything to do with, or say anything about this."

"What about Pfrann Dukat?" Odo asked, still focused on Lange, aware of the cartilage she called bone and the muscle-bound Cardassian steel of the Gul that unless Dukat was remarkably contained he would have, not could have killed her.

"Pfrann Dukat?" Bashir stammered to a pause.

"Feasible or not?"

"Feasible?" Bashir echoed. "Well, feasible based on what -- "

"Age, height, weight, lack thereof and inherited penchant for companionship of the female gender," Odo listed impatiently. "Never mind, we'll explore it later."

Because right now apart from Damar steaming, Kira seething, Garak and Quark alternately gasping for air, and Captain Sisko harmonizing with T'Lar's demand for order, Gul Anon Dukat was generally unimpressed. Citing "No I don't have a problem with it," in reply to Ch'Pok's pleasantly encouraging "Gul Dukat?"

He ascended to the witness stand. All six feet, three hundred and fifty or so pounds of him, arms, chest and head dwarfing the podium as he settled in the chair. "I said Pfrann," Odo reminded Kira's repeated notification that Lange was alive, if not greatly improved within the last minute.

"I know what you said," she hissed over Lange's bent head. "Dukat, I believe!"

"Yes, well, Dukat I don't believe," Odo assured. Not this one, the one before him, or any other one that was likely to come after. Not to be personally, that is physically involved with Lange's attack, nor for that matter a word he said; not that he said much with any affectations really. Just that grating, choppy accent of his and continued general disinterest agreeing with Ch'Pok's recital of the-facts-as-they-were-known-to-be until the Advocate got to the part about identifying the Threat Force that had invaded Quark's; Bajorans. When Ch'Pok got to the Bajorans, Dukat's posture took on little more insolence along with his tone.

His brother bristled up in the stands. Anon saw him, felt him; Pfrann so terrified of him slipping on the Klingon's oil. The lawyer knew something. He thought he did. He _wanted_ to; was attempting to. "Yes, Bajorans," Anon agreed roughly with the grinning, ugly face trying to be coy. "Two of them. I don't know who they were -- yellow suits; Special Forces," he spoke directly to Sisko; condemning the Federation, accusing them of incompetence. "You say no, I say yes. Bajoran Special Forces. Who cares what Shakaar and you claim; not me."

"Move to correct," the Changeling Odo rose to his feet. "That would be the Federation, Bajor _and_ the ruling Cardassian Civilian Council who concur to accept the Threat Force not to be comprised of Bajoran Special Forces."

"I am Central Command!" Anon reminded with a harsh thump of his fist against the breast of his black and silver tunic of armor.

"The embodiment of," Odo did not dispute.

"Objection," Ch'Pok raised an amused finger in protest. "Prosecution is badgering the witness."

"Sustained," T'Lar chastised Odo. "Prosecution will confine itself."

"Where were we?" Ch'Pok smiled at Anon.

"Bajorans," he insisted. "They were all Bajorans."

"Objection," Odo rose.

"Who I saw!" Anon snapped. "I was on the steps. My brother. Janice…that one," he signaled toward Leeta. "Quark, Garak; I pushed them."

"Pushed?" Ch'Pok stopped him.

Anon's eyes rolled. "Janice, yes. That one -- " he resignaled toward Leeta. "Down. Out of the way. I jumped; my brother."

"And then there were two Bajorans," Ch'Pok nodded in satisfaction.

"No," Anon's weight shifted forward with a cold sneer. "And then I instructed Pfrann to assist Sisko with suppressing the rebels; he needed it."

Ch'Pok smiled, Sisko continued not to. "And then what did you do?" the Advocate questioned. Anon looked at him, Ch'Pok smiled again. "Gul Dukat?"

"I attempted to get them out of there; out of the way. Janice. The Ferengi. Garak. That one -- " his hand waved.

"Leeta," Rom piped up with immediate apologies to T'Lar's gavel. "Um…Sorry. Just, you know, that's who she is."

"For the record," Leeta added.

"Oh, Jeez…" O'Brien hung his head.

"Relax, Chief," Sisko advised.

"Relax? I can't relax! Julian's right! Why is he even up there? What's he got to do with any of this?"

Sisko had no idea; interested, yes, he had to admit.

"It has all the makings of a circus!" O'Brien insisted. "Trust me! It has all the makings of a circus!"

"At which time you were attacked," Ch'Pok prompted Anon. "When you attempted to bring the Bajoran delegate to safety…"

"No, not I," Anon corrected. "The Ferengi and Garak -- and that one," he pointed to Leeta. "Leeta. I ordered them to remove Janice from the scene; the Vulcan was dead."

"And then you were attacked," Ch'Pok nodded.

"_We_ were attacked," Anon emphasized.

"By two Bajorans…" Ch'Pok moved back to the table to check his notes. "One you struck, I believe? With a Federation phaser rifle?"

"Yes, one I struck -- two he did. The alien," the hand swished out in indication of the bulky, large figure sitting with the Ferengi and Garak; the tailor's and his eyes met briefly. Garak's wide with their usual intent look of startled surprise. Anon's cold with a message and warning of silence or death; it wasn't by accident Tan perched on the end seat of the row directly across from them.

"Morn," Ch'Pok offered T'Lar. "Let the record so state."

"Whoever," Anon said. "I remember the knife. I remember the Infirmary."

"Reasonable," Ch'Pok agreed. "What time were you released from the Infirmary?"

"Released?" Anon thought about that before answering. "I don't know. 1500, 1600, the next day? I released myself -- "

"Yes, well, actually -- " Bashir rose.

"Objection," Odo overruled him.

"Overruled, Constable," T'Lar corrected once she finished banging the gavel down in warning to Bashir. "You will have a chance to cross examine the witness."

"I don't need a chance. Less interest. Matter of accuracy of record that's all. And the record clearly shows Doctor Bashir to be the one who released Gul Dukat."

"No, I released me," Anon insisted. "What was Bashir going to say? _No_?"

"So indicated as a matter of opinion, Gul Dukat," T'Lar granted. "Be advised the court understands Advocate Ch'Pok seeks an informal accounting of the events, as it is logical you are unfamiliar with Federation jurisprudence. You are instructed to confine your answers to the questions asked."

"What?" Anon said, her stiff and stilted speech lost on him.

"Advocate?" T'Lar's head tipped, looking for assistance from the Klingon.

"Talk to me," Ch'Pok complied with his smile for Anon.

Talk to him? The young Gul was studying him; there was something in the look. An undercurrent beneath the bristling energy easily interpreted as hostility. "Nervousness?" Dax chanced risking T'Lar's gavel to mention to Benjamin.

"Anger perhaps, yes, Commander. Impatience," Sisko's nod incorporated an understanding of T'Lar's glance. "No questions, Magistrate. Please continue."

"Upon your release from the Infirmary…" Ch'Pok resumed inquiring.

"I returned to my quarters."

"Is that all?"

He didn't understand the question; Ch'Pok was smiling again. "Did you go anywhere else, Gul Dukat? Other than your quarters? Quark's, for example…" he checked his notes.

"Yes," Anon waved. "To the holosuites. That was later."

"How much later?"

Anon groaned. "I don't know. Eighteen, 1900. It was with permission, if that's what you want to know. That one; Bashir. Ask him."

"No need," Ch'Pok reassured. "An informal accounting, that's all, as Magistrate T'Lar has mentioned."

"Pattern of movement," Anon understood the supposed premise of the interrogation. "You're saying we were under observation by the Threat Force since boarding Terok Nor."

"Deep Space Nine," Odo interjected without troubling to stand.

"Entirely possibly, if not obvious, wouldn't you agree?" Ch'Pok's brows dipped in their furrowed V formation. 

"Possible, obvious -- irrelevant," Anon shrugged. 

"Irrelevant?" Ch'Pok was intrigued. "You were attacked, Gul Dukat, the evening before."

Anon eyed him. "That was different."

"Different, as it was the evening before; Monday," Ch'Pok nodded. "To where we are now talking about Tuesday…As it might interest you to know that on Tuesday, 1545 is the actual time you secured the holosuites for the purpose of a Cardassian sauna from the proprietor of Quark's."

"Secured. Not employed. No, it doesn't interest me. I know what time I attended the sauna."

"Approximately 18, 1900," Ch'Pok agreed. "A point for the record, Gul Dukat, that's all; how long were you in attendance at the sauna?"

He had to think again before calculating a guess. "Hours? Five of them? Six? I don't know. Your time record is different than mine. Mine says breakfast, not what Sisko says to be breakfast," the hand swished out annoyed, the contorted face suddenly shifting away from Sisko to grin widely for his brother sitting attentive in the audience. "Pfrann was angry something had happened to me. Remember that? Yes, it's very true. A concern for something happening to me; it didn't."

"And very little time afforded you to adjust to the change in time increments," Ch'Pok nodded.

The Gul's grin faded quickly back into disdain. "I was in the Infirmary twenty-four counts after I arrived. I would say that was little time, wouldn't you?"

"Oh, yes," Ch'Pok assured. "Yes, most definitely…it would be early Wednesday morning by the time you returned to your quarters from the holosuites, if that's of any assistance."

"If you say so," Anon shrugged. "Zero 900 I saw Bashir in the Infirmary. That much I know because he hailed to remind me I was two hours late."

"Remind?" Ch'Pok verified.

Anon huffed. "Three times. Pfrann knows. I had instructions to rest and Bashir wants to know why I am resting -- like you," he accused. "Cardassians rest. You?" he didn't know. Klingons danced or something. Reveled in their wounds. There was also an undercurrent of sly, snide humor in the Gul's testimony as he grew more comfortable with his position on the stand.

"After which you attended an abbreviated session with the Federation and Bajoran delegates."

"No," Anon corrected, "after which Bashir said I was not Changeling and could attend the conference -- they ring a bell like that one," he indicated the standard Federation accruement of gilded brass alloy standing proud on the forward corner of the judge's bench. 

"Mandatory blood screenings, Advocate," Sisko identified quietly for Ch'Pok's quizzical approach for his notes. "Gul Dukat is being facetious."

"Attempting, yes," Ch'Pok accepted.

"Aren't you interested as to _why?"_ O'Brien hinted.

"Why?" Ch'Pok treated him with his smile. "Well, why I would think to be obvious. As a Cardassian, he's obligated."

"This is ridiculous, you know?" O'Brien scoffed as Ch'Pok moved back to center stage. "It's absolutely ridiculous."

"It's interesting," was all Sisko would say.

"Following the conference," Ch'Pok read to Anon from the data padd, "you returned with escort to your quarters."

"Yes."

"At what time were you advised by Captain Sisko of the security breech?"

"No time. We were advised of nothing. By Damar, orders for the fleet to embark to Terok Nor, that's all."

"By fleet you mean a squadron of Galor battle cruisers," Ch'Pok nodded. "Currently held in station at the Federation border."

"Why?" Anon said. "You have a fear of battle?"

Ch'Pok chuckled with a grand wave around the amphitheater. "Battle? Over something as trifling as this? I wouldn't think so."

"Trifling," Anon frowned in careful dissection of the expression. "Insignificant." He ogled Janice with the external component fixed to her forehead, winking and blinking its green light at him. Not sure if the color meant something good or bad, or nothing at all, he decided it meant nothing he couldn't fix or change. She looked like Janice looking back at him, weak and whitened to the light, sleepy color of her dress. Her energy and eyes soft, needing protection, not living dead like Borg. He turned to Sisko sitting with his engineer who tried to kill her. "It's significant. We came to talk, not fight. You made the fight; not Cardassia. The Federation isn't paranoid; it is notified. Security is inadequate; you are. You were told; now you know. The fleet is fixed to cross the border with orders; mine. You don't approve? Oh, well," he shrugged. "Give me your complaints to ignore like you ignored mine."

"Objection…" Sisko rose from his seat in anger with the blatantly false accusations designed to provoke, yes, and promote precisely that, a fight.

"So noted as a matter of opinion," T'Lar granted Anon.

"A matter of opinion, my left foot!" Sisko charged. "Conference, Advocate, now!"

"Without accusation, Gul Dukat, your words could be perceived as a threat of military confrontation." Ch'Pok cautioned with a turn on his heel for Sisko at the table.

"Threat?" Anon scoffed. "You have me confused with some other Gul Dukat."

Sisko blinked. "I wouldn't think so," he corrected coldly.

"No?" Anon jumped up, the Cardassian troupe behind Odo immediately responding, security immediately responding to them. "One hundred and sixteen civilians are dead! They went to the Ferengi to eat, not die! You don't find something wrong with that? I do! I say adjourn. You say no. Two days later you are telling me the Bajoran representative is attacked by Federation. Are you crazy? The fleet crosses. That's it! _I_ will see to the return to Cardassian Space. _I _will see to the Neutral's return to her colony!"

"Hold your positions!" Sisko thundered above the sudden press of bodies attempting to force their way onto the floor against a wall of others attempting to hold them back. "I said, come to order!" he grabbed the nearest body to him; it was the Chief who Sisko promptly slammed right back down in his seat.

"It's a time bomb!" O'Brien sputtered. "You're right, it's damn time bomb waiting to happen!"

"Has happened, Chief!" Sisko corrected. "Has happened! Constable?"

"Over here," Odo hailed from the witness podium.

"No, it's all right, it's all right, I'm all right…" Anon reassured his brother, up over the tops of the seats and at his side at the stand, someone's phaser rifle securely in hand.

"He's quick," Dax paused to nod at Worf.

"Yes," Worf sighed, "he is quick."

Lithe, slender, vicious, and thirsty for action; blood thirsty. "Some other time perhaps," Odo's arm cracked forward to snatch the phaser rifle from Pfrann's grip. The eyes turned on him; gold and bright. "Go ahead," Odo encouraged. "Try it."

"No, don't." The smarter one of the two stopped the foolishness of the younger. "I'm fine. I said, go with Tan; sit down. That's an order."

"Waiting to be obeyed," Odo secured the Sentinel's arm, aiming Pfrann toward the waiting scowl of the Sentinel Tan with some additional advice for the Gul. "That goes for you, too. It's a court of law -- "

"Not Quark's," Anon straightened his tunic, finding Sisko's attention in the receding sea of yellow jumpsuits and Cardassian uniforms. "What are you looking at?"

Looking at? Precisely that; him. Listening intently to the Gul's anger he would have difficulty believing in even though he was hearing it himself. "You," Sisko replied. "I am looking at you."

Anon nodded coarsely. "One hundred and sixteen civilians dead with their forks still in hand; it would never happen on Cardassia. No knife in my stomach…no Federation attacking Neutrals for daring to agree with the Union above you…" his waving hand isolated Janice being consoled back down into her seat by Nerys and two gray Humans struggling to have their say above Bashir.

Sisko's cheeks pinched. "As this _is_ a court of law, Dukat. Not a platform for propaganda."

"You say propaganda! I say conspiracy that you could crush if you wanted to!" Anon's fist struck the edge of the podium with the power to inflict a dent.

Sisko glanced, Bashir nodded satisfied from his station of soothing Janice frightened by the violent outburst of emotion. "As I said, out of the question."

"It's all right," Anon assured Sisko. "We have justice on Cardassia, the same as you. You allow the Threat Force to abort my conference. Attack and defile the Cardassian and Bajoran delegates -- my father waits on Elba II to talk to you. You listening, Federation?" he verified with O'Brien. "The Emperor Dukat waits for you."

"Oh, I'm sweating now," O'Brien joked as Sisko slowly returned to the table. "I'm really sweating now."

"That's enough, Chief," he suggested, hearing T'Lar's reminder of his original call for a conference with the Advocate. Conference? Yes, Sisko wanted a conference. With Dax, perhaps; Odo. Not Ch'Pok.

"Interesting response," Dax was available to offer the pensive stare searching her.

"Extremely interesting, Commander. I would have to say, extremely interesting. Poised for some reason, yes, definitely. All of them, not just Dukat."

Dax considered the general tension in the room. "Anger?" she offered back what he had said only a few minutes before. Sisko's narrowed stare bore down on her; she smiled. "It's not possible they are just as angry as we are over the situation and everything that has happened? It was Dukat's conference, after all. It has been canceled." She said Dukat, and she meant Dukat. Perhaps as a matter of record it continued to be Damar's conference, that was all.

"I suppose it's possible, Commander, yes," Sisko agreed finally.

Dax nodded. "And simply compounded by the fact they are Cardassian."

"Who don't tread lightly, Commander, that's also very true…No," Sisko turned around in answer to T'Lar's question. "No, a conference is not necessary at this time, Magistrate."

"You may continue, Advocate," she directed.

"Thank you," Ch'Pok stepped back into the spotlight. "Only a few more questions of the witness, if the court sees fit to allow…"

Her head tipped. "The court allows."

"Allow…" Sisko awakened from his rumination quickly with a suspicious glance for the data padd Ch'Pok held in hand.

"Gul Dukat?" the Advocate tested the waters before proceeding.

"What?" Anon said belligerently. "If I ordered the Klingons deaths aboard the cruiser, you wouldn't have to ask, you'd know it."

"It would seem unlikely for the Tir to volunteer harboring some Bajoran terrorists, wouldn't it?" Ch'Pok's steps brought him swiftly forward, the padd extended, his smile entrenched.

"The Tir?" O'Brien startled.

"Every place but, Chief," Sisko acknowledged sourly the one avenue not investigated following the riot at Quark's. "Every place but."

"Yeah, but…" O'Brien said.

"It would better explain the suspect's ability to overpower Martok's bridge crew," Dax was also quickly alert. "The appearance of a Bajoran officer may have only been a holographic shield; the intruder certainly had and employed holographic ability on the Promenade."

"A holographic projection of a Bajoran activated and deactivated to deflect attention away from the Klingon bridge; the transporter's determined destination point." Worf still held doubts about a single Cardassian's ability to better five Klingons. "In the confusion it is possible I assumed the transport's point of origin to be the security office when it was the Tir. The Cardassians utilized the situation at Quark's in an attempt to implicate Gowron as the supporter of the Threat Force; I owe General Martok an apology." he concluded.

Dax smiled. "Also possible."

"Entirely possible, Mister Worf," Sisko nodded, focused on Ch'Pok and his data padd. "Entirely possible." 

"Gul Dukat?" Ch'Pok tempted Anon likewise eyeing the data padd. "An educated opinion, no more. If you would take a moment to review…"

"Give it to me," Anon accepted the data log, his expression as bland as T'Lar's had been, his examination as brief before he looked up to sit back in his seat.

"Gul Dukat?" the Klingon invited as the Federation held their breath.

"No," Anon declined, an answer simple, direct, and unsatisfying for the Advocate and the audience watching them. 

"No?" Ch'Pok cocked his head, puzzled. "I'm afraid I don't understand -- "

"I said no!" Anon snapped, the tension in his brother rising along with his, building again, as with the room's. Eyes starting to dart back and forth between each other; Nerys' face contorted; Sisko's head cocked slightly, watching and waiting. "What don't you understand? You asked, I'm telling you. Not opinion; fact. You understand fact? This isn't fact. It's lies. False. Untrue."

"Oh, yes, I do understand what you're attempting to convey…" Ch'Pok said. "But, no, I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean. Surely, it stands to reason the information has been confirmed -- "

"Which is why you ask me, right?" Anon interrupted.

"As it has been verified to be authentic," Ch'Pok nodded. "By Federation and, of course, Klingon analyses -- "

"And now by Cardassian!" Anon insisted. "Who says no!"

"No, what?" Ch'Pok pressed. 

Anon groaned. The Klingon smiled. The Vulcan sat on her tower shaking her head. "The witness will answer…"

"What?" Anon demanded. "Answer what? It is not what it appears to be. You understand that? It is not what it appears to be."

"Not what it appears to be…" Ch'Pok savored before he shrugged with a flourishing motion of surrender for their enraptured group of spectators. "Well, what it appears to be is you and Doctor Lange engaged in a variety of copulative acts."

"You son-of-a-bitch!" Anon was up from his seat screaming profanities above the new wave of incredulous whats spreading over the faces of O'Brien, Sisko, Kira, Bashir. Pfrann up and over the seats, back at his brother's side, someone else's phaser rifle hastily, and violently collected in the shuffle; a Cardassian's this time as the sentries surged forward to be pressed back.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

"Well," Dax mentioned to Worf as security fought to secure order, "it was a fair presumption Ch'Pok was talking about the Tir."

"Yes," Worf agreed.

"Which," Dax admitted, "Ch'Pok may still know something we don't know about the Klingon bridge."

"Yes," Worf agreed.

"He certainly knows something," Dax listened to Anon's screaming instructions to his brother.

"No, I'm all right…I'm all right!" Anon ripped the phaser rifle from Pfrann, shoving him away while he did what? Attempt to fight off the league of security attempting to hold him back from taking aim at Ch'Pok?

"That would be generally inadvisable," Worf halted Pfrann from going anywhere other than to his seat.

"Yes, it would be," Dax advised Anon finding his way blocked by the Trill. "Not to say Benjamin doesn't have the same idea as you."

He stared at her, the red eyes as angry as they were confused; she smiled again. "And not to say that data padd doesn't shed a whole new light, because it does."

"What is he talking about?"

Janice ignored the insistent demands of Kira clutching for her to stare straight ahead.

"Look at me!"

"That's enough," Odo was successful in prying Kira loose to where Bashir and the Sorges were clearly failing.

"Yes, please," Bashir insisted, "because he's mad -- they're all mad -- "

"A few madder than others," Odo observed.

"You heard what he said!" Kira shrieked.

"Yes, I heard him," Odo assured. Above the distortion of his translator and the valiant attempt of the station's universal translator to interpret and communicate the enraged outcry; 'son-of-a-bitch' apparently as close as the computer could get.

"Not Dukat!" Kira threatened to shred Odo's tunic with her nails.

"Ch'Pok also," Odo excused himself from her grip, preoccupied as he was at the moment with hearing, or listening to someone else.

"Sit down!" Sisko forced his will and his way into the melee, perspiring with the sweat and strength of rage as he tore at the assortment of arms and hands battling with each other; he turned back once. Hearing the repetitious pounding of T'Lar's hammer insisting upon order.

"Order," she droned. "There will be order -- or there will be sanctions, Captain," she warned Sisko bearing down on her bench.

"To the devil with your sanctions!" Sisko pulled the gavel from her hands to drive it again and again into the gilded bell. "If you can't control your courtroom, Madam, I can and shall!"

"All right! All right!" Bashir had him by the wrist. "We heard you! We heard you! Yes…we heard you," he took a breath, nodding to the waves of yellow and blackened silver-gray parting to reveal Ch'Pok being held at bay in one corner. The Dukats being held at bay in two others, and interestingly enough Damar being held back by the giant Tan in the last and final fourth; the aisle.

"Out of the question, Sisko," the Emperor seethed above the shoulders blocking him. "Gul Dukat has not been appropriately counseled."

"I don't need your stupid counsel!" Anon shouted back, continuing in his struggle to free himself of the Trill and her helpers.

"Entrapment, Dukat," Damar's head dropped back in disgust of the derelict's stupidity. "Do you understand the word entrapment?"

"I understand stupid, yes, like you! Stupid lies! Stupid Klingons -- let go of me!" he charged Dax.

"Explain it to him," Damar surrendered to Sisko with a push away from Tan; the giant didn't budge. The Emperor eyed him. "Dukat's fate waits on Cardassia Prime; no one can change that. Neither I, nor you."

Tan released him with a snort to turn and study the Federation's Sisko far below the tip of his head before he looked up to the Gul cornered by the podium and pairs of powerful hands; he took a step, Sisko's right there to match it. "Don't even think about," Sisko warned. "Or I'll bring you down, so help me, if it's the last thing I do."

"Quite," Bashir nodded dumbly as the giant showed distinct signs of hesitation, but not necessarily retreat. "Chances are it would be."

"Yes, thank you, Doctor," Sisko closed his eyes, his headache returning to pound like some judge's gavel. "Commander, release Gul Dukat to the responsibility of his own conduct."

"Thank you!" Anon jarred himself loose of Dax.

"Sentinel Tan?" Sisko waited.

The giant ogled him through his watery pupils, dilated, tearing and bloodshot from the intensity of the station's lighting. "It's engineer, Sisko," he sneered. "Chief Engineer. Your security systems are as faulty and flawed as Anon claims them to be."

"Apparently," Sisko's clenched jaw cracked as it shifted, stung by the brazen confession and truth in the Cardassian's words. 

Tan snorted again with a dictating call for Pfrann to stand down and resume his station in the audience with his squad.

"Yes, well," Odo grunted as the last of the last disbanded. "I knew he wasn't a Sentinel."

"That's of little consolation, Constable," Sisko assured harshly. "Very little consolation, to say the least." He stopped in his retreat to scrutinize Lange, hardly appearing to be the _type_, if anyone cared to know the whole, cold truth.

"It should be interesting," Odo acknowledged.

"It had better be," Sisko walked away.

Easier for him to do than Kira. Her hand was on the table. Her weight leaning heavily. Her mouth speaking to the ear of the mottled brown head still refusing to acknowledge her. "A man's life is at stake, damn his career! If you know anything about that data padd…if there is one element of truth!"

"Which man?" Rebecca Sorge requested; Kira stared at her.

"Point," Bashir spoke up from near Kira's shoulder, urging her to join him in the row behind the table. "There has to be an explanation. You know that as well as I do; of course there's an explanation…"

"Will you just shut up!" Kira shoved him aside to fling herself down in a seat.

"Quite all right," Bashir straightened his composure with a promise for Sorge; Tracy Sorge, that was. Rebecca Sorge clearly suffering from the same faulty philosophy as many of her peers that upheld bad men weren't bad men, merely misunderstood, with that questioning comment of hers "Which man"? Which man's career and life were on the line? Dukat's or Miles Edward O'Brien? The Chief's quite obviously. Dukat no more misunderstood than his father before him and so on down the Dukat ancestral line.

"There is an explanation, definitely," Bashir maintained to Sorge. "For the data padd, as well as Kira's acute sensitivity to the idea of betrayal; she's Bajoran. If hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, it certainly hath no fury like a Bajoran who believes she's been betrayed -- by a Bajoran to the Cardassians, no less," his hand patted Kira's knee, not in the manner of any form of overture, simply because it was conveniently there. "Which Janice isn't Bajoran," he pointed out to her in reminder. "Anymore than you've been betrayed. It's a Klingon plot with likely a Cardassian hand or two in there for good measure; Damar's, I would suspect. Or Dukat's. Something else you know as well as I do." 

"Advocate?" Magistrate T'Lar tolled her gilded bell in signal for the games to resume, break for a recess, or call it a draw; a draw wasn't likely. Left alone in their arena Dukat and Ch'Pok looked the part of two gladiators poised to circle one another, if anyone wanted to know Bashir's opinion.

"No," Sorge uncrossed his legs to recross them, one wouldn't think in a manner of continued and expressed boredom unless the man was so utterly callous. "Spare us, Doctor, and also yourself."

"Yes, well, perhaps spare aggravating Captain Sisko's headache," Bashir winced in sympathy for the Captain's grimace with the sound of the bell and prompt turn on his heel to return the gavel to its rightful owner.

"Thank you, Captain," T'Lar nodded stiffly.

"Not at all," Sisko strode for his seat and the Chief's smug grin.

"Now that took nerve," O'Brien chuckled in reference to the gavel. "That took nerve."

"Indeed," Sisko said. "I should have such nerve of a few others I can think of."

"Yeah, huh? But, heck. Come on. I mean, you don't believe him anymore than I do -- do you?"

"No," Sisko said. "No, I don't believe either of them." Not Gul Dukat, or for that matter Advocate Ch'Pok.

"That's what I'm saying," O'Brien nodded. "That's what I'm saying."

"Yes," Sisko's attention was on Dax.

"It would explain the Cardassian tension," she replied.

"Oh, yes, Commander," he said. "Yes, that it most certainly would -- somewhat better than expressed outrages over civilians and Quark's." Benjamin was bruised with contained rage. The flesh of his face and neck, literally bruised by the ferocity of the anger strangling him. The smooth dark color of his skin mottled with blotches.

"Captain?" T'Lar requested from her judicial bench.

"Ready, yes, Magistrate," he agreed. "Please."

"The court is in session," T'Lar tested her gavel. "Advocate Ch'Pok may resume questioning his witness…"

"In a moment," Sisko halted her immediately. "For the court's record, if Advocate Ch'Pok plans to pursue his line of questioning, he is to proceed with the utmost dignity. Keeping in mind Doctor Lange's neutral status and her position as representative to the Bajoran government."

"I'll second that," Odo called out like a contestant at a raffle. "And add a motion to review and analyze the contents of that data padd to my own satisfaction before these proceedings continue."

"Indeed," Sisko agreed. "That is acceptable to the defense."

"An unnecessary waste of the court's time, Magistrate," Ch'Pok protested. "The data padd has been thoroughly examined by your own appointed UFP authority prior to being granted admittance…" he smiled. "As both my honorable assistant Captain Sisko, and the honorable Constable Odo are aware."

"No threat, simple fact," Odo rose from his seat to advise T'Lar. "I'll go over your head if I have to First Minister Shakaar."

"First Minister Shakaar is also keenly aware, Constable, of all information," Ch'Pok interjected. Odo wouldn't go as far as to say gloated; he didn't have to. The implications were sufficient.

"What?" Kira's drained hiss seared the air.

"I'll also second that," Odo grunted with a second nod for T'Lar. "Make that the Federation Supreme Assembly. Or are you up to suggesting the UFP believes this nonsense as well?"

"It is logical, Constable, great diligence would have been shown in determining the authenticity of all data." She was cool under pressure O'Brien would grant the cold-hearted witch that.

"No holographic enactment," Odo proposed what Dukat was likely poised to promote, if he had any brains to go along with his fantasies.

"Hardly, Constable," Ch'Pok shook his head. "Do you take us to be amateurs?"

"Yes, well, what I take you to be," Odo assured, "isn't the issue. There's more than a few questions surrounding that data padd; not excluding the how and where of its origin."

"Oh, yes," Ch'Pok would think those would only be two of hundreds. "Thousands, Constable. Where, of course, could be anywhere; including the possibility of Deep Space Nine. How, naturally, would likely depend somewhat upon who…"

"What about why?" Odo interjected.

"As when, of course," Ch'Pok smiled, "naturally also figures prominently in Chief O'Brien's defense; never to our detriment. Even if analysis can't confirm the production dating to be Wednesday? The date of Doctor Lange's supposed attack?"

"Why can't it?" Odo insisted. "There aren't too many alternative choices that come to mind, margin for error aside."

"I'm sure both Gul Dukat and Doctor Lange can tell us, Constable," Ch'Pok hinted, "if either feels so inclined. As I'm confident we can arrive at the correct and appropriate conclusion, aren't you? For the express benefit of Chief O'Brien?" He had this idea of pressuring Sisko into compliance.

The Captain was tempted to strike him. If Sisko was ever tempted to strike a man outside the field of combat, he was tempted to strike this one. "Not in exchange for another innocent victim!" he let loose for the official record.

"Innocent?" Ch'Pok's smile flickered. "Come now, Captain, it's hardly a broad jump to imagine Chief O'Brien inadvertently bumbling onto a love tryst; perhaps one having gotten mildly out of hand. Either way the Chief had to be silenced. By somewhat of a perverse method, I'll grant you. But then what may be perverse, or repugnant to you and I, isn't necessarily perverse or repugnant to Gul Dukat or any Cardassian." 

"Innocent!" Sisko barked. "Look at the woman and tell me you can see anything but innocence!"

Ch'Pok looked. "To the contrary, I see a very clever and beguiling young Human; well rehearsed."

"Rehearsed to the point of death," Odo grunted. "But that's all right. It's also not a broad jump from excess of passion to conspiracy of murder and O'Brien's inadvertent interruption of said murder in progress; still doesn't explain the data padd or how it came to be in Klingon hands."

"I respect your version of jurisprudence, Constable," Ch'Pok hung his head with a troubled shake, "even if I don't entirely understand it. If a crime has been committed, someone has to be guilty. To impose this mandatory presumption of innocence is awkward and redundant in its application to a suspect already deemed suspect with reason, with the burden of proof falling to the victim, already deemed victim."

"The data padd," Odo said.

"It was given to us to insure justice, and also discretion," Ch'Pok smiled. "Anonymously, First Minister Shakaar would have preferred, and still does require any or all acknowledge of his involvement be stricken from any record, including this one. A point of discretion, to which the Empire respectfully concurs. Mistrust of Emperor Damar's intentions, Gul Dukat's, naturally, as well as the role of the Federation and his own Neutral representative in this conference assembly, First Minister may have employed security measures outside the boundaries of the UFP strict code of ethics, but he is, nevertheless, an honorable man. Unable to sit complacently by and allow an innocent man to pay for another's crime -- if there's been a crime; questionable. Certainly one has been committed against Chief O'Brien. But I remain skeptical if that same premise can be applied to Doctor Lange -- though we're open, Constable," he promised. "Certainly, Captain Sisko and I are both open to being shown otherwise. Trusting you understand, our first priority is to Chief O'Brien, presumed innocent until proven otherwise. With the burden of proof falling to you and Doctor Lange, not we."

"It's times like this I remember why I never filed an application for membership in the UFP," Odo sat down.

"Constable?" T'Lar requested, the computer apparently requiring clarification of his silent action for the court's record.

"No further questions," Odo waved. "Continue."

"Advocate," she directed.

"Yes, of course," Ch'Pok's hands tugged at the split breast of his tunic with brisk steps for Anon. "Your father would never dream of letting us down; try not to disappoint me."

"Objection," Odo cited from his seat, seeing no reason to rise, or look up from scanning his own assortment of notations. "The defense is badgering its own witness. If we've now decided Gul Dukat to be hostile, let it be so noted for the record."

"Sustained," T'Lar's gavel struck home. "Defense Council is instructed to refrain. The court is prepared to recognize Gul Dukat as a hostile witness."

"Thank you," Ch'Pok folded his hands, his smile smearing his Klingon face. "To resume, Gul Dukat. When you say the data padd is not what it appears to be…"

"Of course it isn't," Bashir muttered in insistence on behalf of the silent Dukat.

"Meaning?" Ch'Pok pressed Anon. "What? Meaning it is a holographic enactment as Constable Odo has suggested?" Anon sneered, Ch'Pok beamed. "No, of course it isn't. What it is, is you and Doctor Lange -- "

"In lies!" Anon interrupted, erupted actually. "Yes, lies! I don't even know Janice Lange. Only as Neutral representative for the Bajoran State." 

"All lies; the data padd," Ch'Pok pivoted to the audience with his arms flung wide, his shoulders arching in a shrug. "So you would like to have us believe."

"Believe what you want to believe," the Gul's thin lips pursed tightly, stained red with anger, his neck expanding with the increased throbbing of his pulse. "I'm telling you it's false; contrived."

"Contrived?" the Klingon's head tipped to the side.

"Yes! Scheme! Plan! Design!"

"Order," T'Lar's gavel struck. "To order, Gul Dukat."

"Ordered!" Anon's fist answered with a strike down on the arm of the chair as he jumped back to his feet. "Yes, ordered, all right? That's the word. Forced! We were forced to comply. Ordered to pose!"

"Hold him," Odo instructed Tan without bothering to turn around, and before those Cardassian boots of Pfrann's went flying past again overhead; which they didn't to the collective sighs of relief of Commanders Worf and Dax. No onslaught of bodies rushing forward to be pushed back, leaving Dukat free to continue spewing forth his tale, obscene without the graphic details; which he skirted. Lucid or clever enough to skirt.

"What is the matter with you?" Anon insisted to the Klingon's back turned on him. "Look at me when I'm talking to you!"

"I'm looking," Ch'Pok claimed, by no means the only one.

"Good! Because do, or die! You understand? Against all will. My will!" his fist struck his chest. "Janice! I meant nothing; not to them. It could be Pfrann, Paq, Damar. They said that! 'What makes you think we're interested in you'? We're not. Stay, if you want to. Go, leave! It's up to you. The Bajoran representative cooperates or she dies!"

"Who said?" Odo interjected; Anon's glare flashing to stare him down.

"Yes, thank you, Constable," Ch'Pok said. "A reasonable question…"

"Security!" Anon barked. "Four of them, yes. Three with phaser rifles. Her face twisted like this!" he grabbed out and seized a sizable chunk of air.

That was too much for Bashir. He jumped back up; incensed by the whole damn tale. "Yes, well, that might explain the cervical fracture, but it hardly explains any reputed acts of fornication!"

"Doctor!" Sisko ordered long before T'Lar's gavel struck its pad.

"Precisely," Bashir insisted. "Doctor. The whole damn story's utterly preposterous. My medical analyses are precisely clear on who is responsible, and who is not -- no offense!" he assured O'Brien gaping at him like he was the one who had lost his mind rather than the lot of them.

"Oh, yeah, right!" O'Brien said. "No damn offense to you!"

"You're responsible," Bashir argued. "I don't want to believe it any more than anyone else. As no more than anyone else can I begin to explain how, or why -- "

"Ryetalyn," Sorge said in his ear.

Regardless, Bashir heard him, ignored him, ranting for another fifteen or so seconds about the impossibilities of Dukat quite clearly maddened himself if he thought he could capitalize on a security breech that had little, if utterly nothing to do with him. Seek to use it as some grotesque form of manipulation of the Bajoran state -- Bashir aborted his tirade mid-sentence. 'Ryetalyn' suddenly penetrating, Sorge's grayed head tipping in silent answer as all Bashir could do was stare at him, hearing his brain continuing to scream "Impossible" "It's impossible".

"So it is," Ch'Pok gleefully agreed to his witness. "For we are not talking about Wednesday, are we, Gul Dukat? But instead Tuesday. That forgotten evening. That quiet one in between the terrorist attack on Quark's and the proposed assault of Doctor Lange by Chief O'Brien…"

"Tuesday?" Bashir echoed, whispered barely, stammered.

"And so everything Doctor Bashir is saying about impossible is not only quite accurate," Ch'Pok advised Anon, "but entirely irrelevant if you insist upon our listening to you…"

"Tuesday?" Bashir repeated, not to Tracy Sorge, but rather Captain Sisko.

"Sit!" the Captain directed, "Down!"

"I'll do you one better than that -- excuse me," Bashir nodded and left to stand outside in the corridor protected by an equally dense wall of yellow statues; rather a station fixture like the Cardassian archways by this point in time.

"What was I thinking?" Bashir cursed himself. "What in God's name, was I thinking? Ryetalyn. Of course, the damn ryetalyn. It would distort everything; it clearly did distort everything…As clearly the Chief is quite innocent," he assured the one black and sympathetic eye of Martok; the General there to lend what support he could to his Empire, as well as his friend Captain Benjamin Sisko.

"Of course," Martok grunted, Human emotions occasionally finding their way to intriguing him; this Human's emotions, anyway, right now. Who they called 'the good Doctor Bashir' crumbled against his wall one moment, slapping at it the next; even to a Klingon so clearly distraught.

"Yes, of course he is," Bashir insisted from beneath the crushing, inelegant hand attempting to convey a message of consolation as it laid itself heavily upon his shoulder. "As, of course, is Janice."

"A black day," Martok agreed. "A very black day; now made right. I am late, but I am here."

Yes, Bashir could see that -- _now_ he could see that once upon realizing who he was speaking to, and that was General Martok; the Klingon breast of General Martok. "I beg your pardon?" Bashir blinked, certainly he did. "You're here?"

"Hmmmm…" Martok's gloved hand clapped Bashir's shoulder one last time, gently as he could and still hard enough to bruise a bone. "Yes."

"As well as expected apparently," Bashir agreed with the security Task Leader granting the General entrance into the amphitheater.

"Yes, he is expected, Doctor," Sian answered, sourly, listening to his father's instructions to allow the Klingon to pass while he continued attempting to navigate his way around Sisko's shields.

"Yes, that's what I'm saying," Bashir curiously followed the General inside to find out why.

"Gul Dukat?" Ch'Pok's offer overlapped the thumping of T'Lar's gavel and Doctor Bashir's sudden departure, to extend Anon an opportunity to contradict him about much more than the simple verification of a date?

"Tuesday!" the Gul abruptly sat back down with a snarl. "Yes, Tuesday. I didn't harm her, I protected her. I told you that. I couldn't just stand there and allow them to kill her, anymore than I could allow them to kill me. We were in fear for our lives. Put in fear for our lives. Do you understand me?"

"Interesting method of protection," Ch'Pok waggled the padd in cruel and jocular demonstration. "But, no, you're quite right. You didn't harm Doctor Lange, not that day -- or was it night by that point, Gul Dukat? Evening? The time you and Doctor Lange found yourselves beset by…four security officers, I believe you have said? Can you identify these four officers for us?"

"No," Anon snapped. "Of course, I can't identify them. I have no idea who they were."

"Well, you must have some idea," Ch'Pok shook his head.

"Bajoran! Species, yes, that I can tell you. Males!"

"Of course!" Kira was up out of her seat, shouting and waving her hands in protest. "Who else?"

"Major!" Sisko demanded.

"The security team assigned to Lange was Federation," she insisted. "The security team assigned to Dukat was Cardassian. Check the logs!"

"To the contrary, Major," Sisko said, "the reliability of the security log data has been suspect from the beginning."

"Truth, Sisko!" Martok's voice boomed out over the amphitheater. "Who knows better than you or I what truth you speak?"

"General Martok…" Sisko's hand went to his head as T'Lar's gavel sought to bring order, the Chief's hand slapped down on the table behind Sisko with a disgusted "Oh, Jesus…"

"Just what we need," he nodded. "Oh, yes, just what we need. It's over. Forget it, it's over -- "

"That's enough!" Sisko reprimanded. "Get a hold of yourself!" 

"And you!" Martok assured Kira. "Major Kira speaks as much the truth as her honorable commander Sisko!"

"Thank you!" she said.

"A little premature, Nerys," Anar corrected from safely aboard Anon's bridge where the courtly proceeding finally appeared, amidst significant interference on the forward viewing screen.

"Martok," Anar's arm was struck by the helmsman.

"I see Martok," Anar worked to get Anon together with Janice and Pfrann in a secure transporter lock, briefly wondering why Anon was on the witness stand; having an uncomfortable feeling he might have an idea why. Not really important at the moment for the lock continued to repeatedly fail, while aboard the station security was already moving swiftly to attention with Martok's entrance to stand momentarily confused as far as how to respond. Who wasn't confused was Tan.

The giant rose to challenge the Klingon General posed for his march down the aisle; they met in the center. Martok with a grin for the Cardassian's scowl, Sisko's hand up to stop anyone from interfering, directing the Klingon Worf to insure the General's safe and immediate exit from the amphitheater.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

"Bajorans, always Bajorans. Easy to accuse, difficult to prove," Martok taunted the engineer moving to spread his weight before him, blocking the path of the Klingon, one or ten Cardassian giants of little interest to the General.

"So we are," Anar activated his link to the audio implant deep within Tan's brain. "Tan, it's Anar. The corridor is secure; attempting to engage transport. Allow Martok to pass; begrudgingly, of course."

Tan smiled with a step back, daring the General to attempt to proceed. "So says you, Klingon."

"So says Chancellor Gowron," Martok ignored the Cardassian to promise Worf. "The Klingon interests in the Alpha Quadrant shall be protected, as they shall if necessary, be avenged."

"What?" Kira's face twisted, angry and disbelieving.

"I'll second that," Odo grunted.

"Unnecessary," Martok told Kira. "For the Cardassian fleet stands halted at the border, though ordered by Damar two hours ago now to cross -- "

"Ordered?" Damar bolted to his feet, his engineer starting to chuckle, stepping aside to allow Martok to pass.

"He lies. Who knows better than you he lies. Down, sit down," Tan encouraged the Emperor with a rough shove back towards his seat. "It's Sisko's problem, let him handle it."

"I know what you said," Kira screamed at Martok. "And it has nothing! Nothing whatsoever to do with any of this -- the Klingon interests in the Alpha Quadrant?" she gripped Odo, shaking him. "What do the Klingon interests in the Alpha Quadrant have to do with the Bajoran-Cardassian orphan population? Tell me. Explain it to me. I want to _know."_

"Yes, well," Odo said.

"It doesn't!" Kira hissed.

"Major!" Sisko insisted.

"Order…" T'Lar's gavel hammered up and down. "Major Kira will come to order or she will be removed from the courtroom…"

"Oh, for!" Kira released Odo. "Never mind, I'm leaving! Get out of the way! You, too!" she brushed savagely past Martok. "Out of the way! Klingon interests in the Alpha Quadrant! _Klingon_ interests in the Alpha Quadrant!" the door swished closed behind her.

"You do lie, General," Worf agreed with a roll of his eyes, and not as inclined as the Cardassian Tan to let Martok pass. "We would have been notified if the Cardassian squadron crossed the border."

"I hear a voice, distant. See a face that acts as if I should know it; I do not," Martok pushed Worf aside to plow on to Sisko.

"General…" his friend cautioned him, "I am not in the mood…"

"A small lie to suggest Cardassia Prime is so in love with Emperor Damar to risk war with the Empire or the Federation; if he makes it home, he makes it," Martok ignored the blustering O'Brien and hammering of the Vulcan alone in the corner of the room to confide to the Captain he gently seized by the arm. "Necessary only as a diversion, that is all."

"Why is that?" the Trill Dax leaned forward interested.

Martok eyed her long, sable hair and painted violet markings; she was beautiful. Quite beautiful. Too beautiful to be the wife of some cowardly son of Mogh. "Your husband grows weak with his marriage, as he should learn to listen. With one hand I moved him aside. I said the squadron is halted at the border, not crossed -- irrelevant both or either," he returned to Sisko. "I bring news from the Empire, the reason as to why I am late…"

"Here perhaps, but late?" Dax agreed with a smile for the Chief.

"Yeah, huh?" he snorted. "Who says you're even _supposed_ to be here?'

"True," Sisko disengaged himself from Martok's grasp. "Trusting, General, you respect that unless your news has to do with this hearing, you will agree to a private conference -- some other time," he finished with meaning.

"An attempt to conference with Gowron on the whys of this one," Martok assured. "Ch'Pok. His intent, never mind Dukat's. I have secured several communications from the station to Cardassia…one to Bajor Prime demanding Shakaar's immediate response or he stands to be exposed. By what, to whom, why? Who knows? _I _have an idea. The Empire stands poised for the same fate they conspire to inspire here -- war, Sisko. Civil war. Between the witch of the Vedek Assembly Winn and Shakaar. A dishonorable venture, worthy of no Klingon…and, yes," he acknowledged to the dark eyes watching him closely, "a suspicion of mine, as you suspect. I have no proof, irrelevant either way -- "

"Well, what the hell is relevant?" O'Brien insisted.

"Point," Dax agreed.

So it was, except the damn lock kept failing and Anar was beginning to become tense.

"Backing, support," Martok assured Sisko. "Of this one, Ch'Pok. Here with the Chancellor's awareness and instructions or here without -- I was unable to ascertain either through a lengthy investigation of my own," he agreed quickly to Sisko's attention briefly flickering away toward Ch'Pok. "What does it matter now, you're right. For he is here now, among us. A black day. A very black day -- "

"Your point, General," Sisko looked back at him, directly.

Martok straightened up with a deadly and somewhat nonsensical promise. "The blood that washes the Council floor will be this one's, Ch'Pok, long before it is mine or any of those I love -- sworn to protect!" his hand gripped the hilt of his kut'luch. "We have an ancient proverb, lost when stolen by the Federation several generations past. Distorted and upheld as something Federation, when it is Klingon-- it's all right," he waved to calm the Captain's deep breathing, "such old wounds die and heal slowly, but they do die. The proverb's meaning remains clear to me. 'The death of all lawyers is the first act we accomplish'. Eh, Sisko? You understand? Dishonorable scoundrels that they are; unworthy to call themselves Klingons. 'The death of all lawyers is the first act we accomplish'."

Worf frowned. "I am unfamiliar with that proverb."

For some reason that did not surprise Anar; he stared at the viewer screen. "'The death of all lawyers…'"

"Quite," Bashir blinked as well, far below the watchful eye of the Tir. "It's Shakespeare, as a matter of fact. A somewhat _awkward_ version of Shakespeare, I'll grant you. Distorted in translation, as you said -- "

"Eh?" Martok grunted.

"Shakespeare," Bashir repeated. "William Shakespeare. A literary genius several generations in Earth's past -- a millennium ago, at least, or almost. Still, I wouldn't think Shakespeare would be out running around a thousand years ago pinching Klingon proverbs and calling them his own…though, of course, one never really knows…" he nodded down on the Chief. "Yes?"

"Hello!" O'Brien said. "Who cares?"

"Well, no one really cares, I would think," Bashir agreed. "I'm just saying -- "

"Shakespeare! Right! I know it's Shakespeare!"

"To you," Martok scoffed. "You sound like Dukat with you say, I say; _I_ say Klingon -- "

"Come to the blasted point!" O'Brien reached up to grasp him.

"Chief!" Sisko warned as the General's black eye bulged in fury.

"I would say it's possible the only point Martok has is he wants to stay," Dax suggested to Bashir.

With that Sisko found he was in emphatic agreement. "Out of the question, General -- _if!" _he silenced Martok. "You have information pertinent to Chief O'Brien's defense then, yes, I will hear you out. But, other than that -- "

"The child is innocent, Sisko," Martok extolled. "As innocent as the day she was born -- a victim of ardent fervor by this Human," his hand clapped hard on O'Brien's back, his other waving before the amphitheater and her crowd of few. "No more responsible for his actions -- no more guilty than Dukat. Who among you with eyes cannot see this? Eh?" he waited, but not for long. "No one. I tell you, no one."

"Well, yes," Bashir begged interrupting, "Janice is innocent; emphatically, she is. I'm sorry, did you just say something about Dukat being innocent as well?"

"A dark day," Martok reminded him.

"Well, yes, I remember the dark day -- very dark, as a matter of fact…"

"Darkest," Martok insisted. "When a Klingon warrior is forced to uphold the son of the defiler Dukat? But for the sake of honor I would never consider it, never!" his hand cut viciously through the air.

"Definitely the only point he has is he wants to stay," Dax nodded.

"Yes," Worf sighed. 

"Yes, well," Odo grunted over from the prosecution side of the arena, "is there a particular reason why you're considering upholding the son of the defiler Dukat now?"

Martok looked at him. "I said honor, Changeling. When Cardassia falls, she falls to warriors, not lawyers preoccupied with _morals_ -- of which Dukat has none, of course he has none. This is startling to someone? Who?"

"Just checking," Odo nodded. "You were saying?" he cued Ch'Pok distracted by the General; reasonable, as time was also being wasted. 

"Saying…" Ch'Pok repeated, his brow dipped, his black eyes glittering coldly.

"Saying," Odo assured. "Yes, the General has something up his sleeve; who hasn't? Shocking, and to be investigated…looked over, anyway," he grunted. "In the meantime?"

"In the meantime…" Ch'Pok's tugged at the split breast of his tunic, turning to Anon.

"You will need me, Sisko!" Martok promised, on the arm of Worf, being escorted from the stage, back up the aisle, and out the door. "You will call!"

"Yes, well, that was fun," Odo muttered with a trailing eye over Lange covering what could be perceived as a smile behind her folded hands. "Funny, also, apparently." She glanced at him; he nodded. "What do you know about that data padd? No accusation; just a simple yes or no. Is it true? What about false?"

"False," she said.

Odo nodded again. "Beguiling and reasonably clever himself, apparently. What's not Dukat's forte, however, is lying."

"He's not lying."

"Yes, he is," Odo assured. "Simply a matter of about what? Any clues?"

"No," Janice stared straight ahead.

"Your chance," Odo agreed, listening to the Gul in the process of invoking assistance from Lange despite his claims to the contrary, and whether or not she wanted to provide assistance. "It's all right; you might have another."

"I told you I have no idea who the Bajorans were," Anon insisted to Ch'Pok. "Ask Janice; ask her. Describe them, yes. Know them, no. Janice told me two of their names; ask her!"

"The court is asking you," Ch'Pok reiterated.

"Though the court is not above asking Doctor Lange," Odo stood up.

"Objection, Magistrate," Ch'Pok sighed. "Constable Odo will have ample to time to pose questions upon cross examination."

"Upon your cross examination apparently," Odo agreed, "since Lange is my witness, and has yet to be examined -- which she can be, and will be," he tested a personal theory or two out on Anon. One, that the Gul might not be lying, at least about the four Bajorans. Two, that he and Lange might be lovers. The probability factor was much lower for the latter, as it was much higher for the former. Still, there was a probability factor for both. "The question is, do you want that? Do you mind that? Any objections, in other words to Doctor Lange taking the stand?"

Anon glanced at Lange; neutrally, not lovingly. "I helped, not harmed her."

"By complying with the Bajorans wishes, rather than exerting your own."

"I exerted them," Anon corrected. "Attempted to. Janice stopped me."

"Ask her," Odo nodded. He said it even when he didn't say it. 

The thin lips twisted tighter. "No, don't."

"Why?" Odo pressed with the Gul's brief glance toward Lange again. "Stop looking for permission from Doctor Lange. The question's posed to you; answer it."

He answered. "I deferred to Janice's requests."

"Which were?"

"Nothing!" Anon snapped. "Do nothing! When what I wanted to do was kill!"

Ch'Pok chuckled with a chastising tsk-tsk. "Come now, Gul Dukat, chivalry _and_ compassion? Was it really the appropriate time to exhibit or promote either?"

"Better question," Odo said.

"He's my witness, Constable," Ch'Pok reminded; a point with which T'Lar concurred.

"The court has shown leniency, Constable."

"It's shown more than that," Odo assured. "Where and when, Dukat? The choices are limited; it shouldn't be difficult."

"Tuesday," Anon muttered.

"Speak up," Odo requested. "Louder, so Advocate Ch'Pok doesn't miss the opportunity not to request a dismissal of all charges against Chief O'Brien."

"Tuesday," Anon resumed his insolent slouch, his hands folded tightly, resting in his lap. "Yes, it was Tuesday…I said it was Tuesday. I didn't even see Janice on Wednesday except for the conference."

"Not so can you say the same for Tuesday, apparently," Odo agreed. "When Tuesday? Some point after you released yourself from the Infirmary, I dare to presume?"

"Yes, of course, it was after the release from the Infirmary. I don't know what time -- a time you would call dinner."

"2100?"

He stared at the wall not Lange, before answering. "No, earlier. Sixteen, 17, 1800. Somewhere in there. After the Infirmary, and before I went to sauna -- I went to the sauna to relax!" he charged. "All right? To relax! Like Bashir said, you have to rest, you have to relax, or you can't go anywhere!"

"Sixteen, 17, 1800 is quite a choice of 'in there somewhere'," Odo replied. "Let's try where and perhaps we can narrow the time. Was it your quarters?"

Anon snorted. "Oh, yes, my quarters. With Pfrann and Tan and fifteen Cardassian sentries. Bajorans are brave, bold and incredibly stupid."

"Ten sentries," Odo nodded. "Lange's quarters, then."

"_Fifteen_ sentries," Anon corrected. "I have fifteen; you _see_ ten."

"Together with a Chief Engineer," Odo agreed. "Interesting one, or all of them would be unable to prevent your abduction even if they couldn't prevent Lange's."

"They could prevent nothing," Anon sat up straight. "The only prevention was to leave. Abort the conference. Surrender Terok Nor."

"To the Bajorans," Odo said.

"No, to the Federation," Anon sneered. "Yes, to the Bajorans. It's theirs, let them keep it."

"Yes, well, until your father decides it's his again, I'm sure we shall," Odo agreed.

"I am Gul _Anon_ Dukat!" Anon was up out of his seat, his finger pounding into the podium. "You talk to Anon Dukat, or you don't talk. Nor complain when I do not answer."

"Fine," Odo said. "If it wasn't your quarters, and I'll concede that it wasn't, both you and Lange had to be abducted, or both you and Lange had to be willing and willfully somewhere together for the assault to have occurred."

"Assault, yes. Precisely. Not mate, assault. We were in fear for our lives. Put in fear for our lives. Four Bajorans, three phaser rifles. How many times do I have to tell you that?"

Odo nodded. "And to that end, to reiterate Advocate Ch'Pok's point, it seems unlikely you would chose to remain silent when by your own words what you wanted to do was kill."

Anon groaned. "It wasn't my place to disagree with Janice's decision to keep silent. It happened to her, not me. How many times do I have to tell you _that_? I don't have to be my father, you are. All of you! You hear what you want to hear, see what you want to see…" The data padd sailed through the air like a discus clattering into the aisle. Sorge secured it, passing it over to Odo.

"Thank you," Odo took a brief glance over the data; brief was enough. It was graphic. He had seen less, and he had seen worse; Quark's holosuites before the Federation. If he was talking to anyone but Dukat he could see why one or both of the parties involved might be angry over finding their personal life someone's front page news. In the meantime, however, he was talking to Dukat, or rather Dukat was talking to him; shouting still. Caught up in a turbulent mixture of rage, anxiety and angst. But then that's what happens when one gets caught doing something they should not have been doing.

"Exactly what the Bajorans wanted you to see, _knew _you would believe, and I knew too!" Anon insisted to Odo. "I tried to explain that to Janice, but no, you have to have trust, Anon. You have to learn how to trust…this is what she said to me!"

"And may be asked to say again," Ch'Pok stepped neatly back into the scene, "upon examination. In the meantime, I'm sure my most able assistant, Constable Odo will agree, if you could confine your testimony to what _you _said. What _you_ did. After all, Doctor Lange certainly doesn't need coaching, does she?" he smiled. 

"No, I don't," Janice suddenly stood up. "I concur with everything Gul Dukat is saying."

"Really?" Ch'Pok recovered from his brief and minor surprise to ooze downstream for her. "How interesting, Doctor Lange…but, first, may I remind you, you are under oath?"

"And not on the stand," Odo assured with a hand on Lange and a wave to T'Lar that he heard the hammer, the bell, and anything else the Magistrate cared to bang around on her bench. "It's all right, sit down. Your turn will come."

"My chance?" Lange pushed her hair back from her eyes with a smile.

Clever, Odo admitted. It remained to be seen how clever. Yes, the eyes were different; slightly. Yes, the skin was pale, almost white, blemished with nervousness and her own version of anxiety and angst. The only thing missing on Lange was Dukat's rage over her now second, though apparently first assault. There was probably a reason for that; Dukat wasn't it. They must have all been sleeping as Martok had stopped by to suggest. Blind and deaf. Odo glanced down on the data padd on the table, from the padd to the Chief grinding the edge of his nails across his teeth; it still didn't excuse O'Brien. What it did do was introduce a motive for the Chief's actions into the picture that had so far been lacking one.

"May I take the stand, Magistrate?" Lange was asking T'Lar. "Advocate Ch'Pok's questions have as much to do with me as they do with Anon."

"Yes, well, if she's going to take the stand…" Bashir gained control of his scrambling legs to land with a plop next to Lange.

"Yes, well, she's not going to take the stand," Odo corrected. "She can retract her oath of silence she extracted from Dukat and he can answer; he wants to apparently." He nodded to Anon finding it interesting the Gul not only choose to remain on the stand, but comply with the questioning however much he might be insinuating otherwise. Clearly no one was holding a phaser rifle to his head and so he was up there, for whatever reason, of his own free will; Odo wanted to know why; certain Captain Sisko did also. 

"Gul Dukat may answer for himself, Constable," Ch'Pok reminded. "Doctor Lange's presence and sworn deposition find her ineligible for special consideration under the provisions the UFP has in place to protect Neutrals and others deemed unable or unfit to testify -- "

"What trick didn't you miss?" It was a rare occasion Odo lost his temper; rarer even than Sisko, close to the brink of losing his again.

"That's enough!" Sisko was there to break it up and settle the matter. "The weight and value of Doctor Lange's testimony is in no way hindered or enhanced by its location. The prosecution bench is sufficient under appropriate medical supervision and legal counsel -- sit!" he directed Bashir.

"Quite, I'm sitting," Bashir sat.

"You also, Counselor Sorge," Sisko requested. "And you, Constable -- sit down. Advocate Ch'Pok has the floor."

"Thank you, Captain," Ch'Pok said.

"Save it," Sisko suggested. "Do you anticipate calling witnesses in support of Doctor Lange's testimony, Constable? Other than Doctor Bashir or Counselor Sorge?"

"Yes, well…" Odo said.

"Major Kira," Lange helped him out.

It was not who Sisko expected, if he expected anyone, but he nodded nevertheless. "If Major Kira would please take the available witness stand."

"Actually, Major Kira's been evicted," Bashir cleared his throat in subtle reminder when Kira failed to hop to immediately obeying. "Self-evicted, I should say. Same as myself. Though, yes, I've obviously returned…and, yes," he agreed with the Captain's rabid stare, "all fairly unnecessary for me to continue."

"Indeed," Sisko said. "Commander Dax, if you would call Major Kira to return to the courtroom."

"Yes," Dax rose to find Kira out in the corridor, unknowingly pacing under the watchful and resigned observation of Anar.

She was an intriguing woman, Major Kira. Anar thought that before and he was thinking of that now, following Kira's storm-driven pace up and down the corridor, her hands pulling and tugging their way through her cropped red hair. Anar could see the interest his nephew Adon had found with her, and also see the fear.

"Independence," Anar's chin rested misleadingly docile in the palm of his hand, his fingers drumming a choppy tattoo on the console where the face of child Ziyal watched him. Smiling now that she had managed to convey her message that Anar could sit there until the Federation's hell froze over attempting to lock her brothers and sister Janice in a transport beam. "Fierce independence," Anar nodded to Ziyal, deciding that to be one of Kira Nerys' better qualities. "Remarkably fierce. A rebel long before me with her embrace of you. A guardian once herself, I suppose. I wonder which disturbs her more. The idea Janice is innocent? Or the idea that the child might be guilty?"

__

"Two…" Ziyal struggled to reply. Anar watched her stained thin lips move; she had a fascination with numbers Dukat's brat.

"Two what, child?" he asked not really interested as he stretched with a smile for his Cardassian assistants, convinced by this point he, like their Emperor Dukat, was hopelessly insane talking to ghostly images of dead family members he perceived to be around him. "Two months, two days, two hours, two years. You try my patience, even if you don't try my faith. Two years hence I hope to be a grandfather still; a father perhaps again. Depending upon what Major Kira has on her agenda, or that interesting child Leeta, should Nerys prove to be unavailable."

Ziyal laughed; musically. Anar could hear the divinity of bells in her chords. He smiled again, briefly, watching Kira turn her cat-like snarl on Martok requesting her assistance and cooperation; she hit him. She didn't just holler, gesticulate or threaten. She hauled off and gave Martok a powerful smack in the middle of his steel-protected Klingon belly.

"Ow," Anar winced in sympathy pain for the stinging strike that had to hurt Kira more than Martok. The Klingon retreated however without striking back; doubtfully out of fear. Far more likely in an uncharacteristic intelligence and understanding that if he retaliated he could pick Kira Nerys up with one hand and send her sailing into her Prophets' world. Anar could have used Kira on his colony. Used her spirit and her strength and unflinching bravery. Used her until she died.

"Touché," Anar admitted to Ziyal. "I've no doubt Kira Nerys would like to share toys and wonders with her grandchildren as well."

Kira was kinder with the Trill's approach a short time later. Disgusted and resigned, having run with her emotions, and wrung them dry to the point that she was exhausted.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

"What?" Kira's shoulders slumped in a sagging posture.

Dax smiled. "Time to come back inside?"

She didn't want to go back inside; she couldn't. She felt like she was accusing Lange, and she didn't even know why she would be. Dax bit her lip contemplating Kira's concern. "Dukat, maybe? Hating, knowing, despising, loathing, mistrusting Dukat?"

Kira shuddered out a chuckle. "All of that?"

"And more probably," Dax believed. "You've seen her before. You know her name." Watched her walk along every causeway, level of the Promenade. This lifeless, trapped figure stationed at her master's side.

"That's not Lange," Kira shook her head and the memories from it.

"No," Dax agreed, "it's not Lange."

Kira walked away. "I just hate him so. I can't even -- _see._ Can you understand that? It's like I can't even see. I'm fine as long as I don't think…" she swallowed; the swallow actually hurting.

"About Ziyal?" Dax said softly.

"Yes!" Kira turned around. "Dukat cared nothing about her. He cared absolutely nothing about her."

"And you believed he did."

"Yes!" Kira said. "How stupid could I be? How stupid could I get? What was I looking at? What did I see?"

"You liked her?" Dax wondered to herself, knowing Kira had liked Ziyal, just not sure if that was the answer.

"Yes, I liked her. Very much."

"So why shouldn't Dukat?" Dax decided simple was the best answer and probably right.

Kira nodded after a while. "You're right. You know, you're right."

"After 400 years and seven lifetimes I'd better be right sometimes." It wasn't a boast, Dax said it joking even though it was true. "Ready to come home?"

Kira pouted. "Do I have a choice?"

"Well…" Dax said. "Not really? Benjamin sent me out to bring you back inside… not that we haven't just missed your company, but Lange's on the witness stand."

Kira's softening mood changed abruptly; Dax knew it would. "Why? I thought the whole point of the deposition was so she didn't have to go through any of this. The data padd doesn't change anything!"

"With the Chief's case, no," Dax agreed. "Not yet anyway."

"Now instead of just having to face O'Brien she also has to face Dukat. Which, she's always had to face him. _First_ she had to face him!"

"Kira, Lange's on the stand in defense of Dukat." Dax hadn't meant it to come out as an interruption.

"What?" Kira said.

"She's not Ziyal," Dax said calmly, plainly. There were victims, and there were victims, and no two victims were the same. As there were superficial similarities between Lange and Ziyal. Age. A somewhat impaired social view and vision due to their restrictive or isolated upbringing. A degree of lacking structure, of displacement, of not belonging, hinting with Lange, as with Ziyal, family roots and home had probably been where family roots and home happened to be planted for a time. But other than that? Janice Lange and Tora Ziyal were two vastly different people. Much more so than one young woman just happened to be Human and the other just happened to be Bajoran-Cardassian. 

"I know Lange's not Ziyal!" Kira screamed, threatening to explode.

And she just might explode emotionally. Dax could feel Kira's churning violence as she held Kira firmly by her shoulders. "Then is it possible Anon is not Dukat?"

"No! I know Dukat!"

That was true she did; far better than any of them. Dax released Kira with a sigh. "Maybe we are all deaf and blind -- Martok," she explained. "You missed that part. It's a little confusing, but basically we're foolish for questioning what we already know; that includes Ch'Pok's intent of besmirching the Cardassian Union?"

"What else do we know?" Kira was suspicious; not at all interested in Ch'Pok.

"Well…" Dax said. "Apart from Ch'Pok's strategy of attack really isn't the Klingon way, and what Martok really wanted was to be allowed to stay…Dukat's Dukat? Guilty only of being Dukat? And therefore innocent?"

"He choked the life out of her!"

Something Martok wouldn't even take into consideration other than to puzzle about the claim of assault in what was a clear case of seduction to him. Dax could feel Julian behind her. A lecture and condemnation of the Klingon way ready on the tip of his tongue. She turned around; Julian wasn't there. "Dukat or the Chief?" she asked Kira. "Actually, apart from Dukat's testimony the assault happened Tuesday, not Wednesday, Martok seemed to insinuate it was the Chief. Probably just responding in rage to either finding, or finding out about Dukat. Lange's innocent and therefore guilty of being innocent and allowing herself to be seduced…"

Kira stopped her. Dax nodded, admitting again, "It's a little confusing."

Maybe for her. "He's fat!"

"Fat?" Dax repeated. "Dukat? Fat, as in proportion of weight, or appetite?"

"You want to know what I see, that's what I see!"

"Gluttony," Dax started to chuckle. "I really wouldn't call Dukat fat. Anymore than I would call Ch'Pok or Damar…or Worf, for that matter. They're broad, large men; Worf's just a little taller," she winked.

"He's fat," Kira insisted. "Gluttonous, yes, that, too. And I know Lange would never…never…"

"Succumb to being seduced by Dukat?" Dax offered. "No more than you? Kira, not to be cruel, but you don't know Lange. No more, or any better than any of us do." 

"He choked her," Kira reminded coldly having apparently decided Dukat was guilty, regardless of the discrepancy between days. "That isn't seduction, it's assault."

"Pain, not passion," Dax mentioned to the Bajoran Special Forces Task Leader as Kira turned to march back inside. "Depends really on where you're standing in the circle."

"You talk about things I do not know," Sian replied, coolly.

"That's all right," Dax agreed with an eye over the officer's insignia that was different.

"Special Intelligence liaison to the UFP," Sian identified. "Acting Commander of the Bajoran Special Forces. I arrived yesterday to insure the sanctity of the proceedings and Chief O'Brien's surrender to Starfleet Security Marshals."

Dax nodded. "I'd much rather talk about things you do know -- or should know. Why was General Martok granted entrance?"

Sian glanced at his Deputy Leader. "By authority of the Supreme Assembly."

"Claimed, or you saw the authority?" Dax smiled. "Or did you even bother to ask? You know, gentlemen, really, as specialists, you leave much to be desired. If I didn't know Shakaar Adon better, I'd have to say he planned it that way."

"He had authority," the deputy Task Leader insisted when the Trill took her leave, following the Major Kira back inside the auditorium. "I verified it."

"Yes," Sian agreed. "A clever forgery apparently. Order the General's internment and notify Starfleet we are detaining his crew as well as a precaution. It is advised at this time they extend that precaution and issue an order for all Klingon vessels in the sector between here and the Cardassian border to stand down under threat of force. First Minister Shakaar will not tolerate any further embarrassment of the Bajoran State. Gowron's argument with the Cardassian Union and the UFP is not our interest and will not be forced upon us; this is Bajoran Space, not Federation. Damar had our permission to enter, and he has our blessing to leave."

"Understood."

__

"Excellent," his father's voice congratulated Sian in his ear. _"You have Adon's bearing; the UFP will heed the advice."_

What about the Klingons? Sian wished to ask what his father was being asked by Anon's helmsman.

"If they're out there?" Anar agreed.

"They're out there," the helmsman assured.

"Probably," Anar concurred. "And if they're out there, resistive to the UFP's recommendation to stand down, then I guess Shakaar has no choice but to make good on his threat and order the Bajoran forces to respond with force."

"Shakaar…" the Cardassian studied the face that was Shakaar's but for the white hair, easily altered should public appearance become suddenly desirable or mandatory; that was the Bajoran's plan, obviously, not excluding a safe journey home. Anar smiled, the helmsman nodded in understanding. "We are not there yet, Bajoran."

"Not won yet," Anar acknowledged.

"No."

"And the Bajorans always fight battles they cannot win."

"True," the Cardassian assured.

"And yet somehow we do win," Anar winked with a pleasant, though arrogant chuckle. "You must be thinking of some other Shakaar Adon. As Anon says, some other Gul Dukat. United, I think even the Prophets would agree we are unstoppable."

It was more than an interesting thought simply for the helmsman to digest. Once again Anar found he was wondering if he had finally hit upon the correct interpretation of the child Ziyal; symbolic of a united world, rather than a divided one? 

"The witness stand, Major, if you would," Sisko gestured as Kira came back down the aisle. "Magistrate?"

"Thank you, Captain," T'Lar tolled her bell. "Advocate Ch'Pok, you may resume questioning your witness of choice; Constable Odo is reminded to keep silent, or sanctions will be imposed."

"Thank _you_, Magistrate…" Ch'Pok eyed his selection with a wetted appetite. "For simplicity sake, the defense finds no objection to allowing Doctor Lange to either support or counter Gul Dukat's testimony -- when called upon to do so, Doctor," he smiled for her. "A simple yes or no should suffice on most occasions. When not, you will be granted time to consult with Constable Odo before responding, if so requested…The same applies to you, Major," his head tipped in Kira's direction. "Though the defense anticipates reserving any direct questioning of Major Kira for a later time. That may change, of course, depending upon what Gul Dukat has to say."

"So noted," T'Lar agreed.

"Thank you, again," Ch'Pok's broad steps approached Anon. "If we could return, Gul Dukat, to the question of when, and also where, your alleged encounter with this quartet of Bajorans occurred -- "

"Tuesday," Anon replied.

"Self-discipline, Gul Dukat," Ch'Pok raised his hand in invocation of patience. "A virtue among civilized races. As I was saying, this violent quartet of Bajorans, either disguised as, or truly members of First Minister Shakaar's Special Forces…Now you may answer the question, if you would so again, please."

Anon looked at him; Ch'Pok smiled. "When Tuesday? I believe you have already testified the time to be somewhere around 1600 or 1800. If we accept the recorded time you secured the holosuites from the owner and proprietor of Quark's to be 1545, would you say the approximate time of your terrorizing encounter to be closer to that of 1600 or 1800?"

"1800," Anon continued to look at him.

"And if we accept the security log of Doctor Lange's return to her quarters from assisting Doctors Bashir and Sorge in the station's morgue," Ch'Pok continued to smile, "to be that of 1700, would you continue to place the approximate time of your encounter at 1800? Or would it now be somewhat later?"

"Earlier," Anon corrected. "Approximately 1720. I met with Janice in her quarters to discuss canceling the conference; what I wanted to do. I had been in communication with Cardassia Prime for several hours; check the communication logs of the station. We were talking; it wasn't very long. Janice sent the Federation security officer away when she realized I was there, waiting for her. Now you know where, and now you know when."

"We certainly do," Ch'Pok's brow fluttered upwards in appreciation. "An interesting point however, beyond the obvious, is your suggestion the security officer assigned to Doctor Lange was Federation Special Forces, not Bajoran. That point agrees not only with Major Kira's advancement of testimony earlier that the duty assignment was Federation, it poses considerable question to you identifying your assailants to be Bajoran. How could they be both, Gul Dukat? How could they?"

"I don't know. You say they were both, not me."

"Well, where did they come from, if they didn't gain entrance to Doctor Lange's quarters and you from the corridor? Did they transport?"

"Ah, ha, transport," O'Brien's hand cracked Sisko's arm. "There's your transport, I told you I didn't transport. But believe me? Heck, no. That's _illegal_ or something."

"Wrong day," Dax reminded before Benjamin.

"Huh?" O'Brien said.

"Wrong day," Dax nodded.

"No, it isn't the wrong day," O'Brien insisted. "He's lying, and I'm telling you I remember someone being there -- remember that? I told you someone was there, and it wasn't Kira."

"Julian maintains Lange's short term memory would have to be involved." Dax looked across toward Bashir clinging to Janice's side with his hand tightly on her wrist, his arm draped protectively behind her; he glanced up. Either sensing her attention or sensing Odo's sensing her attention before glancing at Bashir who straightened up slightly from his custodial slouch to think for a moment before rising to make his way across the aisle under T'Lar's disapproving notice. 

"Dukat is prompting her," Worf agreed.

"Possibly why he is willing to continue testifying," Dax said. "But if Dukat is prompting Lange, so is Ch'Pok."

"Entrapment, Commander," Benjamin mentioned quietly what Damar had said.

"Likely illegal," Bashir's hand touched Dax's shoulder as he sat down behind her, the breath from his mouth brushing her hair and lobe of her ear. "I need you to do something for me…"

"Which I could be tempted to overlook, Doctor," Sisko acknowledged with a nod to T'Lar. "A brief conference, Magistrate, if the court would please…"

"Who couldn't?" Bashir stretched for Sisko's data padd with a grin, his arm firmly in place around Jadzia's shoulders still doing her best to ignore him. Who was probably having to work at it even harder was Mister Worf. Bashir's grin widened as he settled back. "Medical conference, of course," he clarified, squeezing Dax's hand around the padd he presented her.

Something T'Lar presumed though nevertheless verified with Odo. "Objections, Constable?"

"Yes, well, not really," Odo presumed himself Bashir had something on his mind other than choosing now to plight his trough, or whatever it was he was doing. "Doctor Bashir is the court's sanctioned medical authority, regardless of whose side."

"It is still inappropriate," Worf mentioned.

That prompted an immediate incensed "Hello!" from O'Brien. "What is this? I count, don't I? I at least count!"

"What do you want me to do?" Dax simply asked Bashir; Benjamin's interest as well.

Julian drew her even closer, breathing again in her ear. "Review the chemical analyses."

"For?" Dax asked.

Bashir smiled that time, no grin. "You tell me. I don't know why I didn't think of you before rather than troubling Sorge. Probably something to do with…" he was conscious of the muscles in her arms he could feel under the sleeves of her jumpsuit; their strength, density and size twice the size of what they were, had been, already twice the size of his when they first met.

"Exoarcheology," Dax said. 

"It doesn't matter," Bashir shook his head. "I have a conscience regardless of what even I might like to think. I can't prove Miles is innocent…To the contrary, I remain convinced he is not innocent; not entirely. But that isn't the point, is it? No. The only point is to cast enough reasonable doubt and, yes, with that I probably can help -- or the chemical analyses might," he agreed as Dax glanced over her shoulder at Benjamin.

"Permission granted," Sisko said.

"Quite. We'll deal with the admissibility arguments as they occur," Bashir sat back as Dax excused herself to exit and Sisko responded to T'Lar's questioning and Ch'Pok expression of general suspicion.

"Doctor Bashir feels it to be in Doctor Lange's best interest for her complete medical records to be included in the court's minutes, not excluding those currently under review by the appointed board of Physicians," Sisko tread carefully the line between telling the truth and not tipping his hand. "The defense has no objection; Commander Dax has been sent to secure the data."

"I'm fine," Janice said.

"Again, only in your best interest, Doctor," Sisko's head tipped.

"Constable?" T'Lar asked.

"No objections," Odo said, sure there was more to it and that was all right, too.

Who was also sure was Rebecca Sorge. Her muttered confidence to her husband was an interesting one from Odo's point of view. "Tracy, if you don't take that young man aside and acquaint him with the facts of life, believe me, I shall."

"Yes, well," apart from Odo highly doubted if Bashir needed any such acquaintance made, the question on his mind was: "Why? Meaning?"

"Meaning precisely that," Rebecca Sorge assured as Bashir returned to drape himself back around Lange. "Doctor Lange has already acknowledged Gul Dukat's claim of assault. I see no reason to continue belaboring the issue. If you need a professional opinion, kindly reacquaint yourself with my report."

"Yes, well," Odo grunted, "perhaps you should reacquaint yourself with a few facts of life, one of which is the acute fascination with sensationalism."

She stared at him, glared more accurately; he nodded. "Didn't say I agreed. Said, fact of life."

"What are you doing?" Janice asked Bashir.

"Doing?" he smiled. "Exactly what Captain Sisko said; insuring your rights."

"But I am all right," Janice maintained. "Anon is telling the truth."

"Now how can you say that?" he tried his hand at brushing the stubborn strands of snarled hair out from in front of her eyes. "When he hasn't even completed testimony?"

He confused her momentarily. "I was there…"

"Where?" Bashir urged her back to paying attention to him rather than Dukat. "You don't even know, do you? No, of course you don't, because you can't remember. Not the date, nor the place. Only what Dukat is telling you."

"No, you're wrong," she shook his head.

"Hardly," Bashir said. "Impossible even," he looked dead at Sorge; Tracy, that was. "Care to put it to the test? Because while I can understand someone endeavoring to protect Janice, I can't for the life me understand anyone striving to protect Dukat; it's what you're doing. Damn you, can't you see that for yourself? Unless you have another explanation for your fascination with comparing DNA profiles?"

"You're reaching, Doctor," Sorge cautioned.

For him perhaps, to be intercepted by Odo. "The devil I am," Bashir promised with a grooming run of his fingers through his hair as he sat back down. "To be seen, as I said. Jadzia's fairly brilliant in her own right; far less cynical and a great deal more open and fair-minded than I am."

"So you'll have proof of what Dukat's already admitted," Sorge snorted. "Congratulations."

"I'll have proof of what day," Bashir said tightly. "Unless you've gone as far as to actually taint the evidence, and even then -- "

"And even then," Sorge heard him the first time, "the woman is fairly brilliant in her own right; your words, Doctor, not mine. Don't come looking for me when they come right back at you."

"Yes, well, on that note," Odo nodded to T'Lar impatient tap-tap of her gavel. "A minor difference in professional medical opinion -- "

"As it's also entirely possible those 'stars and lights' Miles saw were transport beams," Bashir interrupted. Odo looked at him; he nodded sharply. "No, I'm not in competition with you either. Simply stating what could be a fact."

"So's modesty, humility, and general all 'round good manners," Odo held out hope for a few others, though he wouldn't hold his breath. Bashir looked at him; he nodded smartly. "Put some tape over it in other words. When I need help, I'll ask." 

"I don't know where they came from," Anon repeated to Ch'Pok. "Corridor. Transport. One or the other. I was talking, not looking to be attacked. They were behind me, that's all I know."

"Well, you must know who granted you entrance," Ch'Pok smiled. "We'll forgo inquiring how or why for the moment…"

"Yes, well, perhaps you will," Odo rose in immediate objection. "I'll settle for nothing less than mandatory and immediate detainment pending arrest. The security force assigned to Doctor Lange at the time continues to serve as a security force; not as accessory to a security breech." 

"Logical," T'Lar agreed with instructions to her deputy. "Secure the immediate detainment of all security teams appointed to Doctor Lange on the star date of mention."

"Thank you," Odo sat down.

T'Lar nodded. "The witness is instructed to answer how entrance was secured. If, to his ability, identify the security force in charge of Doctor Lange to be Federation or Bajoran."

"I don't know," Anon insisted. "The security officer Janice dismissed from her quarters was Federation. I have no idea who was in the corridor. I transported."

T'Lar wasn't the only one who didn't appreciate the answer; Sisko's disapproval shone brightly. "A logical avenue of questioning to be approached, Gul Dukat," T'Lar's nod to Ch'Pok was stiff. "The question of identity falls to Doctor Lange."

"If you would, Doctor," Ch'Pok sighed.

"Federation, yes," Janice agreed. 

"And your perception of the intruders to your quarters? Were they of any known Federation species? Or do you concur with Gul Dukat's identification of the intruders appearing to be Bajoran?"

She hesitated.

"Doctor Lange?"

"May I confer with Constable Odo?"

"If necessary," Ch'Pok sighed again. "The question should be simple. Either the intruders appeared to you to be Bajoran, or they appeared to be some other species."

"No, they were Bajoran -- "

"Thank you," he turned his back.

"Objection," Odo rose. "Call for a review of the court's minutes that include Doctor Lange's request to confer, and Gul Dukat's testimony Doctor Lange could identify at least two of the alleged assailants beyond that of their alleged species."

"Sustained," T'Lar allowed. "Defense counsel is instructed to rephrase his question of identification and to allow Doctor Lange an opportunity to confer."

"In a moment," Odo halted Ch'Pok. "Prosecution further advises Gul Dukat that he's to consider himself under arrest for admitted violation of the station's security ordinances. Prosecution also requires the immediate detainment of Chief Engineer Tan pending investigation into his role in the same admitted security breech of Doctor Lange's quarters by transporter."

"Objection," Ch'Pok shook his head. "Prosecution assumes violation. It's entirely possible Doctor Lange invited Gul Dukat."

"In another universe, perhaps," Odo assured. "Unless Gul Dukat was forced to transport against his will, the charges of security violation stand."

"No, I wasn't forced," Anon scoffed. "Neither did Tan effect my transport; I effected it. I am an engineer. This is Terok Nor; what you like to call DS9. The systems are Cardassian. Sisko is mistaken in his identifying the control center in my quarters to be Bajoran, as he is mistaken in everything else. It's my control center. Ask Damar. I transported him as a test article when his whining got on my nerves."

Damar laughed out loud. "In your dreams, Dukat."

"Yes, well, he didn't dream that chair," Odo muttered to…well, Bashir, since he was the only one sitting there.

"Wrong day," Bashir quipped coldly.

"Make that tops when it comes to attitude." Odo cued Anon. "You were saying?"

"I am saying Tan's orders were to assist Pfrann in locating and extinguishing the Threat Force; that was Tuesday. I have been effecting control over the station's systems since late Sunday; were I not injured Monday, the Threat Force would have been stopped then."

"_Or," _Odo said, "were you not tampering with the station's systems, it's possible we could have stopped the Threat Force then and there."

"Indeed, Constable," Sisko's cheeks puffed in and out. "Indeed."

"The imposition of charges stand," Odo nodded tersely to T'Lar. "And expand to include detainment of Sentinel Pfrann Dukat."

"_And_ I would think expand to include Doctor Lange, Constable," Ch'Pok pointed out. "Who willfully accepted Gul Dukat's illegal entry into her quarters, dismissing the appointed security matron to enable them to converse in private -- true or false, Doctor Lange? Or do you need a moment to confer?"

"Yes, that's true," Janice agreed.

"Constable?" Ch'Pok requested. Odo eyed him. Ch'Pok smiled, petitioning T'Lar. "Magistrate? I seriously doubt if Federation policy governing Neutrals extends to allowing conspiracy to commit espionage; by any other definition, nothing less."

"So ordered," her gavel struck. "Doctor Lange is likewise denied exit from these proceedings except under guard of Constable Odo and appointed security…Legate Damar is noted to be informed of the detainment and arrest of his representatives Gul and Sentinel Dukat, and of his officer Tan. Do you wish to register a protest, Legate at this time?"

"To the contrary," he said, "I and the Cardassian Civilian Council stand committed to respect the agreed security protocol of the conference committee, as we stood committed to the conference. I could be wrong, but I don't recall clandestine rendezvous with the Bajoran representative being on the agenda, or hacking our way into Sisko's security systems."

"Yeah, huh?" O'Brien snickered to Sisko. "I wonder if he _recalls_ it's a long walk home? Give me a break, clandestine rendezvous. Dukat's testified six times they were held against their will, and whether he was or not, you going to tell me she wasn't?"

"No," Sisko was not going to tell him that.

"Then what's with imposing charges?" O'Brien sputtered. "Three guys with phaser rifles, another with a camera and Dukat breathing down her neck? Hello. You and I might not dance a jig if they told us to, but are you going to tell me she's not? She's a civilian for God's sake. I don't care how many doctorates she has, or _had_, she's a civilian!"

Sisko watched O'Brien as he rose to his feet in objection.

"Captain?" T'Lar recognized him.

"Thank you," Sisko said. "With due respect to Advocate Ch'Pok and Constable Odo, any charges against Doctor Lange are withdrawn as unsubstantiated -- protests, gentlemen, will get you nowhere. As a Neutral, Doctor Lange maintains specific rights and privileges under Federation law."

"It is logical you may anticipate protests from Starfleet Command, Captain," T'Lar forewarned.

"And the Supreme Assembly," Sisko was prepared. "To be addressed and settled at that time, not before."

"So ordered," her gavel struck. "The court recognizes Captain Sisko's rank and privilege as commander of Deep Space Nine to postpone indictment of Doctor Lange until he has had the opportunity to discuss the matter with his superiors."

"Yes!" Bashir cheered quietly with a healthy squeeze of Janice's hand. "His damn right and privilege to reign supreme, is what you mean -- excuse the vulgar speech."

"You're excused," Rebecca said; Janice was simply quiet.

"The matter before the court is Doctor Lange's request to confer and the issue of identification of the alleged assailants," T'Lar's gavel struck again. "You may resume, Advocate, as previously instructed."

"Do you wish to confer?" Ch'Pok inquired.

"Answer?" Janice proposed.

"By all means," he gestured. "In your own words, Doctor Lange, do you find yourself in agreement with Gul Dukat's assessment of the intruders to be Bajoran, at least in appearance, and at least attired as Bajoran Special Forces?"

"Yes," Janice said.

"Thank you…" Ch'Pok caught Odo's waiting eye. "And do you, Doctor Lange, find yourself in agreement with Gul Dukat's testimony that it was you who proposed to identify two of the intruders to him? Either by name, or some other form of recognition or recollection?"

"Yes," Janice said.

"Would you mind sharing it with us?" Ch'Pok grit his teeth in an encouraging smile.

"I don't know if they are actually Special Forces. I recognized the leader Hawk, and Jin'Mir, the man with the camera, as two men previously identified to me as members of the Bajoran Maquis."

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

It was probably worth the long and draw out wait. As it was probably worth the look on a few of the faces Odo could see, together with most of the faces he could not. Nevertheless, there was one small problem with Lange's identification, beyond the large one of daring to speak the word Maquis in mixed company. And that small problem was likewise registering its way across Major Kira's face. "Yes, well…" Odo rose, his hand up in reassurance to Kira that his memory was as sharp as hers.

"Doctor Lange's identification is so noted as a matter of opinion, Constable," T'Lar had her politically correct answer ready.

"And so it is little more than an opinion," Odo agreed. "For the court's record, the assignment Hawk, or the Hawk, is not unknown to the station's security logs, Bajoran, Federation or Cardassian. I believe we have about twenty-six Hawks logged to date. With the earliest record dating back approximately twenty-five years to the old Federation-Cardassian wars…the Chief may be able to confirm the then reputed Hawk's occupation as a Federation agent, or informant," he nodded to O'Brien, caught up in recalling something himself. "Whichever. Believed Bajoran, the Hawk was obviously not Maquis regardless of his species -- Chief?"

"Yeah, actually…" O'Brien nodded slowly at first and then with confidence. "It's an old intelligence ID. But, no, I never met the…man…Bajoran. I believe he was supposed to be Bajoran; long-time resistance. Real long time. From way back before the Cardassian wars; if _he_ even existed. Rather than just some catch-all phrase like 'Source: Reliable'. That kind of jargon. I don't know. I never met him, as I said. Heard of him, yes. Definitely heard of him -- you ever hear of him?" his squint turned to Sisko.

"No, Chief," Sisko shook his head. "But I'm sure it's simply a matter of checking the security archives."

O'Brien chuckled. "Archives. Right? Before your time. Mine, too, Don't we wish. But, no. Never mind us. Seriously, he's got to be, what? A hundred? If he's even a 'he'."

"He's a he," Odo believed. "And he's 'got to be' somewhere in the vicinity of sixty to seventy Bajoran years old, at least. A man, in other words. Now and at the time; an adult."

"Twenty-seven," Lange reported what was little more than a child by Bajoran standards.

"Yes, well," Odo grunted, "whoever your informant is, he or she was apparently detailed, though mistaken. We'll settle for your assailant calling himself the Hawk. How's that?"

"Just Hawk," Janice nodded. 

"Deal," Odo accepted. "Further for the court's record the name Jin'Mir is unknown to my recollection, but we'll just add it to the security logs. Carry on," he sat down.

"Thank you, Constable," Ch'Pok smiled, not to be outdone on the politically correct side of things. "It the court would also note the Klingon Empire to uphold the complete and utter obliteration of the Maquis entity by the Cardassian Union during the time of the last Federation-Cardassian war -- until the point of the Union's bitter defeat at the hands of the Federation and her ally, the Klingon Empire, eight months ago. A time, which, yes, roughly concurs with Constable Odo's last security record of any Maquis agent known as Hawk, or otherwise."

"Yes, well, utter and complete obliteration of the entity perhaps," Odo concurred. "But I wouldn't discount the existence of some straggling survivors or sympathizers."

"An opinion apparently upheld by Doctor Lange's informant as well," Ch'Pok's brow remained arched in an angle of intrigue. "Interesting tale, Doctor Lange. Do you mind telling the court why your informant felt it necessary to notify you of the potential threat of the individuals calling themselves Hawk and Jin'Mir? I presume there was potential for threat. As I presume your notification transpired at some point earlier than your liaison with Gul Dukat to discuss -- what was it? His desire to cancel the political conference between your worlds and the Federation?"

"Yes Anon wanted to cancel the conference."

Ch'Pok waggled his finger in scolding. "One wouldn't hope you're attempting to avoid the questions surrounding your informant, Doctor Lange by choosing to answer last questions first, which, of course, you aren't. I have no objection to pursuing Gul Dukat's most intriguing and apparent request of you -- was there a request incorporated with his disclosure to you of his desire to cancel? Was he, in turn, seeking agreement, or some form of support from you in presenting this call for cancellation to Legate Damar and/or First Minister Shakaar? And/or perhaps Captain Sisko? Take your time, Doctor Lange, before answering. Would you perhaps like another opportunity to confer with Constable Odo before responding?"

"No," Janice said. "I know what Anon wanted."

"And what did Gul Dukat want?" Ch'Pok encouraged. "Before what he came to want? And that was to protect you from the Bajoran assailants by volunteering himself as a necessary accomplice to their most vile and repugnant scheme, rather than risk your potential fatal harm at the hands of Legate Damar…his brother, Sentinel Dukat…the Cardassian assistant Mister Paq…Interesting Dukat's mention of Mister Paq, Doctor Lange, wouldn't you agree? Killed in the terrorist attack the evening prior? Are you certain it was Tuesday evening the date and time of this alleged assault by Bajoran extremists? Or was it instead Sunday? The first evening of your arrival? Could that explain Gul Dukat's inadvertent slip with mentioning the name Paq among the roster of Cardassians he felt could or would do you harm, rather than protect?"

"No, it was Tuesday," Janice shook her head.

"Emotion then," Ch'Pok decided. "Clearly an emotional outburst on Gul Dukat's part. This claim of Paq, Damar, Pfrann. An effort to emphasize his claim of self-sacrifice and chivalry."

"Is that a question?" Janice asked. "I'm sorry, but you're confusing me."

"Apologies," Ch'Pok's head tipped. "I certainly do not mean to confuse you. I can, if you like, begin again."

"No," Janice said. "If I could just answer one question at a time."

"Question of your choice, Doctor Lange," he consented.

"Anon was extremely upset by what happened at Quark's and wanted me to agree with him and cancel the conference. He felt more would be accomplished by adjourning all sessions to resume at a later date on Cardassia Prime with Captain Sisko and First Minister Shakaar in attendance -- "

"Indeed," Sisko reacted, surprised to find himself so suddenly competent and valuable in the young Gul's eyes.

Janice nodded. "Anon was emphatic about First Minister Shakaar's attendance. More lenient with the idea of you, Captain, acting as Federation representative -- And also the idea of Commander Dax intrigued him once he realized she was -- Curzon?" she hesitated. "The Federation Ambassador mentioned during the opening session?"

"Curzon Dax, yes, Doctor," Sisko agreed. "A joined Trill, former Federation Ambassador to the Klingon Empire. Commander Jadzia Dax hosts the symbiont Dax, formerly hosted by Ambassador Curzon."

"Who is reputedly deceased," Bashir reported in not quite cloaked malice, and questionable accuracy for Janice. "Hence Jadzia's adoption of the name Dax. Which isn't Jadzia's name at all, but rather a way of identifying her willing surrender of her own identity to the accumulated lifetimes of the symbiont."

"To put it one way, yes, Doctor," Sisko agreed quietly.

"To put it another?" Odo hinted.

"Yes, I'm silent," Bashir took the hint with a farewell-for-now pat of Janice's hand, even though he wasn't going anywhere, anymore than she was. "Other than to say, it is all rather complex and involved -- out of balance in some respects. For while Jadzia's mission, if you will, is to advance and accumulate wisdom, knowledge and experiences gleaned over several lifetimes, she does prefer to focus on Curzon. More or less taking up his crusade rather than finding her own…I suspect that, in turn, could be the basis behind Dukat's proposed interest in having Jadzia attend the conference; the Klingon Empire. Something Jadzia not only lives and breathes, but has decided quite literally to become; a Klingon. Short of requesting surgical alteration -- a personal nightmare of mine; hopefully irrational. But at times I'm not so sure. Finding myself terrified Jadzia will carry this obsession of hers just that one -- I'm attempting to be gracious when I say only one step too far. For I do know Jadzia, far better than Mister Worf, or even Captain Sisko, can ever hope to. And while I respect, and admire greatly, the strength of Jadzia's passion, I can't help but worry, damn the clear and obvious benefits to embarking on this theory of intellectual mastery, Jadzia has bound and cast herself into a dangerous, and utterly abusive relationship. Not only with Worf, but most importantly with herself. I scarcely recognize her by this point; truly I don't. And while I long for the return of the Jadzia I once knew, certainly more than willing to assist her in anyway I can, short of issuing a doctor's order that she divorce Mister Worf -- which, believe me, I have been more than tempted to do. Not to be injurious, or rude to Jadzia, or God help me," his hand and eyes fluttered melodramatically, "to disavow the sacred Klingon tradition of marriage -- barbarous as it is, as every one of them are. But to help Jadzia, clearly quite ill and desperately in need of skilled intervention…I can't just sit idly by…

"No, I can't do that," Bashir decided quietly thoughtful, and scarcely half-listening to the proceedings. "I simply can't. For Heaven's sake, it's entirely possible I actually love Jadzia; truly love her. Despite my fear of commitment and feelings of gross inadequacy alongside a woman with three times, if not four times, my physical Human strength, and very nearly immortal on top of that; I love Jadzia. I believe that I do. As I believe that beneath that Curzon veneer is Jadzia who loves me as well…

"Why?" he was looking at Janice, staring as a matter of fact. "Not why Jadzia, why Dukat? It's true, isn't it? What everyone's just too timid and nauseated to admit? You and Dukat are lovers, aren't you? Yes, of course, you are. That's why we keep pressing for details, hoping you'll tell us rather than us having to admit to you what a lot of fools we are. The extraordinarily high levels of Ryetalyn are certainly evidence of that. As those same high levels would clearly destroy, not simply distort evidence of Cardassian DNA; after twenty-four hours? I should say. I was barely able to isolate the Chief after little more than an hour -- why?" He was angry. Quite extremely angry. Reaching to hold her wrist in anger and insistence. Miles was a friend of his. Guilty or innocent, right or wrong, Miles was a friend of his. And, no, while he certainly couldn't agree to any sort of attack or assault, in anger or otherwise, what he did have was this image of a snake in his mind. First seducing one man, and then seducing another. "Why?" Bashir demanded. "He's hardly some dashing figure you can't hope to resist."

"No more than his father," Odo interceded, unraveling the good doctor's clenching fingers from around Lange's wrist despite Bashir's mumbling claim something about lacking three times the Human strength, or something or other, about something or other; Odo didn't know, and couldn't care. "Also a mystery yet to be solved."

"He's putrid," Bashir charged. "Quite nearly putrid."

"Close enough," Odo agreed.

"Incident," Ch'Pok mused, of all the things there were apparently to muse about; Bashir's interpretation of silence an interesting one, and equally uninteresting as no one cared particularly what he was mumbling on about to Lange, least of all Lange, transfixed and paying close attention to Ch'Pok. "Intriguing choice, Doctor Lange. Gul Dukat, I believe has referred to the terrorist attack upon Quark's as an unacceptable massacre of innocent civilians, has he not?"

"Yes."

"But you prefer to view it as an incident. Why is that?"

"Because I don't like the word massacre. Not the way it sounds or what it makes me think of."

"What does it make you think of?" Ch'Pok wet his lips. "Blood?"

"Cruelty," Janice said.

"How fragile you are," Ch'Pok agreed. "Is that what you believe Gul Dukat sees? Or saw? Which is why he agreed to participate in your emotional slaughter?"

"Don't answer that," Rebecca stopped Janice. "You must be aware, Advocate, you are frightening her as much as you are confusing her -- and spare me a history of your culture. I've known Klingons in my time, and now I've met you. I prefer the warriors who carry their swords in plain view."

"My words are my sword, Counselor," Ch'Pok assured. "Within plain view, and within hearing. Spare me a lecture on the delicacies of the Human condition. I cannot make the subject matter any more pleasant for Doctor Lange, as I cannot make it any less unpleasant. I am not the assailants who attacked her without provocation. Not the Cardassian who sought to protect her…and now, for some reason," he turned around to Anon, "finds himself mute of offering any protection, verbal or otherwise."

Anon's return look was sardonic. "You still have to leave Terok Nor, Klingon. Return to your home world alive. You seem to have forgotten that."

"Let's not add threats of death to your already lengthy list of criminal charges, Gul Dukat," Ch'Pok strode forward. "The truth of the matter is, you were as beset by the same lust and violence as the Bajoran assailants, seizing the opportunity handed to you, and not letting go until you had extracted an oath of silence from Doctor Lange. Not her extract one from you."

Anon scoffed. "No, I wasn't beset by lust and violence. I don't even know what beset and lust is…violence," he granted, "yes, I know what violence is. Something I want to do to you; not Janice. You."

"Oh, dear heavens," Garak buried his damp and perspiring brow in the heel of the palm of his hand.

"Yup," Quark laced his fingers together, resting them satisfied on his rotund stomach. "I'm telling you, he's adopted. So, what am I worried about? I'll just tell them the sauna was for health purposes, and they'll believe me that I believed him; it was for health purposes."

"Um…" Rom said.

"No, ums," Quark snapped. "He can't have a liaison if he doesn't even know what a liaison is, now, can he?"

"The witness will confine himself," T'Lar sharply reminded Anon.

"Confine," Anon sneered. "I am confined. Ask Sisko. For crimes against his security systems. I went to Janice's quarters to talk, not attack. To help, not hurt. She wanted silence, I wanted to kill; I agreed to silence. That's it. You have your answers. I'm not repeating myself again."

Ch'Pok smiled. "Except for why the assailants would even be in Doctor Lange's quarters. How would they know to find either of you there?"

"Pattern of movement," Anon reminded. "Your theory, not mine."

"Tell me yours," Ch'Pok extended.

"Technology," Anon assured. "They traced the transporter carrier wave, like they sabotaged Sisko's systems to gain entry as Special Forces security."

"It does sound like Maquis, doesn't it?" Ch'Pok agreed.

"Terrorists," Anon corrected. "It sounds like terrorists. Ask Nerys what she would do; same thing. Is she Maquis? No, she's a terrorist."

"Bajoran Resistance," Ch'Pok chuckled. "A likely former occupation of Doctor Lange's informant as well."

Anon looked at him.

"Do you know the identity of Doctor Lange's informant?"

"Know?" Anon said. "No. How would I know? Why?"

"Doctor Lange advised you of two of the assailants' identities. Didn't you think to inquire as to how or why she would be aware?"

"No. If I thought, I would have thought of Shakaar's briefing. I did not think, only about how to calm her; she was terrified."

"Astounding," Ch'Pok wandered a few steps away. "Truly astounding. You're a Gul, Gul Dukat. The son of Gul Dukat. I repeat the question perchance you did not understand it correctly the first time. Did you think to inquire into Doctor Lange's personal knowledge of two Bajoran terrorists by the adopted or birth names of Hawk and Jin'Mir -- regardless!" he stepped quickly back to the podium, "of how terrified she was, she knew the names of two of the Bajorans engaged in assaulting you. Two men of the four men you wanted to kill. If Doctor Lange knew the identity of two men, why wasn't it possible she knew the names of all four? Of six? Or ten? Of every man or woman comprising the Threat Force that you had ordered to be hunted down and extinguished?"

"I didn't think about it at the time."

"Didn't think?" Ch'Pok said. "Didn't think, or was your order for extermination, in fact, one in retrospect? One not prompted by some proclaimed outrage over the incident at Quark's, but instead a desperate attempt to locate that data padd before it found itself in the hands of anyone else, other than your own?"

"Emphasized. Reiterated after the assault, yes. The order for extermination was issued to Pfrann at the time I told him to assist Sisko; in Quark's."

"I see…" Ch'Pok wandered a short distance away again to wander back, "so what you're saying is you ordered Sentinel Dukat's execution of the Bajoran terrorist in Quark's upon the intruder's refusal to surrender -- "

"No," Anon was waving, "Pfrann wasn't even there. Assura and Dak'jar were killed by security -- " He caught himself; too late. Ch'Pok's face looming dangerously close to him; Sisko catching Odo's eye with a sharp nod for the Changeling. Anon shrugged. "Assura and Dak'jar, yes. Two Bajorans we have been able to identify; criminals. Known criminals to the Bajoran State; not Maquis. Check the UFP files like I did," he advised Sisko. "They know. And now I do. You keep searching for conspiracy, I keep telling you where to find it; it's not Cardassia. I don't know the Bajoran who attack Pfrann only to find himself as dead as his brothers. But I will know; all of them."

"Martok's intercepted transmission to Shakaar?" Dax returned in time with Julian's log to whisper to Sisko tugging pensively on his beard. "I doubt if Dukat would be above threatening exposure if he had managed to secure evidence Shakaar was, or should have been knowledgeable of the Threat Force prior to Quark's."

"Possibly, Commander," Sisko replied. "Entirely possible."

"Yeah, and what's even more probable," O'Brien scoffed.

"Dukat is lying," Worf assured.

Of that Sisko wasn't necessarily convinced, though he wouldn't go as far as including chivalry and/or compassion as Dukat's underlying motives; certainly not with, or in regard to Lange.

"I think that might be what Kira is most frightened of," Dax observed Kira left sitting waiting, if not forgotten on the second witness stand. "Not Dukat, or even Lange."

"But Shakaar, Commander," Sisko agreed coldly. "Reasonable. Completely reasonable."

"What was that Martok said about a dark day?" Dax sympathized.

"The darkest," Sisko concurred. "I would have to say the darkest, even entertaining the thought." Whereas to actually find Shakaar, together with the Federation, guilty of failing to act against a known Threat Force? One that would ultimately put upwards of six thousand civilian lives at stake? There was no saying the attack had to take place at Quark's, it could have been anywhere. And when it was all over one hundred sixteen civilians lay dead with their forks still in hand. Sisko studied the angry, young Gul perched on the witness stand. The words and the anger still impressing themselves on his mind. Firmly caught up in a web sticky with evidence of seduction and deceit of his own doing, Dukat remained nevertheless adamant in professing his innocence together with Lange's. Why did Sisko persist in thinking there was more to the story; perhaps another side? One that Dukat clearly did not wish to pursue, and Ch'Pok was equally adamant about focusing on; the Maquis.

"Rigelian fever," Dax said suddenly in Sisko's ear, the association momentarily escaping him. "Sorry," she apologized, not to Benjamin, to Julian, feeling his grin and breath brush a grateful near-kiss across her cheek. "It's all I can think of. If that's not what you're thinking of, I'm at a loss."

"Close enough," Bashir took the log. "Ryetalyn." 

"The outer colonies," Worf huffed. "Yes. Where Dukat admits to having contracted Rigelian fever himself. It is possible he suspected Doctor Lange of Maquis affiliation, and that is what he hoped to extract during his confrontation with her in her quarters." 

"Oh, for!" O'Brien groaned.

"She has a DNA inhibitor," Dax said. "And that hand phaser had to come from somewhere."

"Holographic transmitter," O'Brien corrected. "Holographic transmitter. What are you saying now? _She's_ Maquis rather than a Cardassian sympathizer? Is that what you're saying now? She can't be both!"

"That's true," Dax admitted to Benjamin. "She can't be both."

"No!" O'Brien assured. "And what he can be is slick. He's slick!" he took a breath, Sisko already frowning by the time the Chief got around to asking. "What hand phaser?"

"Kira's," Dax acknowledged to Sisko. "She gave it to Lange for protection following the increase in threats against the conference…and, yes," she smiled at Worf also frowning, "it would have been somewhat difficult for Lange to conceal, other than strapped to the inside of her leg. In the meantime she is the one with a holographic implant that she could have used to confuse the sensors to allow her to gain entry without the phaser being detected."

"Mata Hari," Julian supplied, hunting through his analyses to prove it.

"Also beautiful," Dax said, if she had her Earth's history right. "Also beguiling."

"And deadly as they come," O'Brien put in. "I repeat, give me a break."

"It doesn't explain Doctor Lange's assault, Commander," Sisko agreed quietly.

"Doesn't it?" she said. "We're the ones insisting Lange's a victim."

"And Dukat's…" Sisko nodded slowly.

"Dukat," Bashir handed Dax the log. "Ripe for the taking, the same as you."

"I believe Julian means you," Dax nodded to O'Brien as she scanned through the report.

O'Brien knew who Julian meant. "Yeah, maybe I am. Heck, _obviously_, I am; I'm sitting here, aren't I? But you're saying Dukat was set up as well? Come on now. _Dukat_?"

"It wouldn't be the first time, Chief," Sisko said. "I doubt if it would be the first time."

"Nor the last," Dax looked up to eye Bashir. "It's still all theory."

"Theory?" he said. "It's all right there…beyond the staggering levels of ryetalyn there is clear evidence of residuals of Cardassian DNA. Dukat can't prove Janice's supposed assault by Bajoran terrorists was Tuesday."

"Anymore than you can prove it was Wednesday. Julian, I wouldn't call this exactly clear."

"It's clear enough for me," Bashir took his log back. "Supported by Dukat's own testimony -- remember that should you decide to have an illicit affair. The bastard's a bastard, but he's also quite clever."

"I believe Julian means Ch'Pok," Dax offered Sisko.

Sisko knew who he meant. "May I?" he borrowed the log.

"By all means," Bashir said. "It's yours. Evidence to be used as evidence -- and I've no qualms about testifying either. Damn Sorge's misguided compassion in wanting to protect Janice; I'm compassionate myself. Simply hardly to the point that I'd also stoop to protecting Dukat."

"Dukat, yes," Sisko agreed. "However, Doctor, I fail to see -- "

"Where, why, or how Janice suddenly falls from grace? Yes, well, quite frankly," Bashir rose to his feet to return to his side of the argument, "if it wasn't for the fact Dukat's hostility is directed just about everywhere and at everyone except for Janice, I'd likely fail to see a few things myself. Apart from that," he flashed a parting grin for Dax, "call it gut instinct, experience; liberal, I might add."

"It really is all just theory," Dax maintained to Sisko, not exactly convinced herself of Lange's potential for guilt in any way.

So it was. And apart from Lange continued to Sisko to hardly appear 'the type', Dukat's hostility continued to direct itself toward Ch'Pok, the Federation, Odo sporadically, not Lange; never Janice Lange.

"Then why didn't you think to ask?" Ch'Pok pressed Anon. "Why didn't you think to ask Doctor Lange for the name of her informant to further assist you in your quest?"

"Because I didn't."

"Well, fortunately Doctor Lange does know the name of her informant," Ch'Pok turned around with a blistering smile for Janice. "If you would tell us, Doctor?"

She stared at him, from him to Anon who nodded, "Tell him. It's all right, go ahead and tell him; he's fine. Safe."

"You!" Ch'Pok whirled on Anon to heave, the veins feeding his family crest pulsating, the chords of his throat strangling his neck.

Anon's upper lip elevated slightly with his sneer. "You said informant."

"His name, Dukat!"

"Anar," Janice volunteered. "The Town Elder of my colony. He's not an informant, he's a dear friend."

"Anar?" Damar came down from his disinterested throne to sit up straight in his chair.

"Yes, Anar," Janice turned around. "Why? Do you know him?"

"Yes, well," Odo had to admit with a shake of his head Sisko's direction, "that was also possibly worth the wait…young woman… Doctor Lange," he adjusted that to say, "Anar is not only the believed identity of a Bajoran posing as the Special Forces Task Force Leader assigned to Cardassian corridor just prior to the melee, we'll call it, at Quark's -- "

"You're crazy," Anon interrupted. "Anar was never assigned as Task Leader anywhere; he's an old man. Middle-aged. Older than my father; Tan."

"You can take that part of it up with Damar," Odo suggested. "In the meantime, Anar is also the believed identity of the same or different Bajoran posing as a station security Task Leader in Quark's during the immediate aftermath -- "

"I said Anar was never assigned as Task Leader," Anon repeated.

"I heard you," Odo assured. "Did you hear me say posing?"

"Yes," Janice said. "And Anar was never posing or assigned as any security Task Leader. He was in Quark's, yes, with Sian."

"Sian," Odo said.

"His son," Anon interjected. "And, no, you can't have either of them. They are under protection of the Cardassian Union for purposes of security; their security. Not your interpretation of security. So is the Neutral representative Janice Lange. You can't take her, I, or any of us anywhere. Attempt, and you are in violation of the security protocol agreement the Union has with the UFP and Bajor Prime; not _me_ in violation, _you_ in violation. Your authority over the Cardassian delegates ended Monday with my assault. I extended my authority to include the Bajoran delegate and her people Tuesday following Janice's attack by the Bajoran terrorists. Check the communication logs. One to Cardassia, the other to Bajor Prime informing both the Civilian Council and Shakaar of my decision to intervene and order a squad to embark to Terok Nor to effect order; a lesson, Changeling, in bringing order out of chaos. That is how we do it on Cardassia Prime."

"That's even more interesting," Odo surrendered to Sisko. "It's all yours."

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

"Yes, thank you, Constable…" Sisko stepped into carefully questioning Lange with a gentle reassurance. "Not to debate Gul Dukat's offer and claim of sanctuary…"

"I agreed to surrender my security to Anon," she stated nervously.

"Not the issue, Doctor," Sisko patiently reiterated.

"Though clearly, yes, all part of Dukat's conspiracy," Bashir hastily proposed having apparently decided between one side and the other to change his mind. 

Sisko's eyes closed and opened in a pregnant blink. "If you cannot control yourself, Doctor, kindly excuse yourself. There will be no further unnecessary alarms rang to intimidate or coerce Doctor Lange's testimony."

"No, of course not," Bashir apologized. "Sorry."

Sisko studied Lange. "The town elder of your colony, were he and his son, by any chance -- "

"The two Bajorans who came to assist me with Anon in Quark's?" Janice smiled. "Yes. I know you're looking for Anar, Captain, Anon told me."

"I am," Sisko agreed. "Did Gul Dukat happen to inform you as to the reasons why?"

"Yes. As I explained to him, I know how Anar ran, but it wasn't to run away."

"Then why run at all?"

"So he could protect me?" she smiled again. "Difficult to do from inside one of your security cells. You have to understand, Anar's never wanted me involved with the conference. He's been trying to talk me out of it for months, terrified from the beginning Hawk, or someone would attempt to abort the conference; violently abort, yes… And they did attempt, didn't they?" she said suddenly as if the realization had suddenly occurred to her. "Oh, my," tears welled up in her eyes.

"Doctor…" Sisko's reach out was instinctive.

"No, I'm all right," Janice firmly shook her head. "Just please try and understand. I couldn't refuse. The colony is so poor…we've been through so much. I was hoping if I agreed to First Minister Shakaar's request I act as representative, he would agree to extending my grant and allow me to stay…" her explanation move to include Kira staring back at her. "Anar's been working with Anon to try and help him locate the Threat Force… not extinguish," she laughed lightly, "that's just how Anon talks sometimes. But to bring them to justice, yes. Whoever you're looking for, I know it's not Anar, but someone else."

"I…" Kira said uncertainly to Sisko.

"That would be difficult, Doctor," Sisko cautiously replied, "for me to accept under all of the circumstances involved."

"Such as the incident aboard the Klingon bridge?" her smile remained. "The Bajoran child abducted on the Promenade? I do know the circumstances; some of them anyway. And difficult, Captain, for you to believe, perhaps, that it wasn't Anar, but not for me. I know Anar; you don't. And Anar…" she considered the strong and gentle face of her colony's elder. "He's a kind man, Captain. A wise man. A grandfather," she laughed lightly again. "Yes, he's a grandfather… Nadya's grandfather," she reminded Kira of her little nine year old friend she had told them about. "And no more than Anar would ever harm Nadya, would he ever dream to harm anyone's child. "

"And simply by coincidence well versed in identifying former Bajoran Maquis," Sisko nodded. "Doctor, I'm sorry…"

"Of course, Anar's well versed," Janice said. "We live in the outer colonies, Captain. Everyone knows the name Hawk, and everyone is as terrified of him. The colony I arrived on eighteen months ago, had over 2,000 permanent residents. If it wasn't for Anar, I don't think there would be thirty-five of us still alive."

"Thirty-five…" Bashir said.

"Doctor," Sisko reminded.

"Well, I'm sorry, but thirty-five?"

"Thirty-five, Captain," Rebecca Sorge took charge of Janice's hand. "I think, while Gul Dukat's offer of sanctuary may be tainted with what you would likely call a personal agenda, you have to agree, it is certainly one of the better offers Doctor Lange has had made to her."

"Better ones?" Bashir was aghast. "The man assaulted her."

"No, he did not…Tracy?" she sighed.

Yes, Sorge knew. If he didn't take the young man aside and talk to him, she would. "No, he didn't assault her, Doctor," he said. "The only evidence of assault, is what you, yourself have been able to ascertain; that of O'Brien. And before you start babbling on about residuals of Cardassian DNA may I suggest that if I took a sampling of the female population of the station, good chances are I would find residuals of your DNA scattered around more than a few places -- likewise without added evidence of assault. True or false?"

"Irrelevant," Bashir said coldly.

"Not to me," Sorge assured Sisko. "Your Advocate looking to hang Dukat for any reason other than he is Dukat? No? Then I suggest you instruct him to get on with the business of whether or not to hang O'Brien. Quite frankly I'm tired of listening to this, and if you think I don't pull weight, a lot of it, with the Federation Supreme Assembly, and just about everyone else, think again."

"Let's hope it doesn't come down to a contest, Doctor," Sisko replied.

Sorge grunted. "Arrogance earned?"

"You bet," Sisko said.

"We'll see."

So they would. "I may have some further questions for you, Doctor," Sisko advised Janice, "following the conclusion of these proceedings."

"No," she shook her head. "I wanted to talk to Kira. I remember wanting to talk to Kira…"

"In confidence?" Bashir prompted. "About Dukat?"

"Anar," Janice said to Kira. "I knew you would agree, not only to speak with him directly yourself, but also with Captain Sisko; explain to him how he and Sian only came here to try and help…and Dak'jar…" she looked suddenly away from Kira to Anon.

"Don't worry about Dak'jar," he shook his head.

"But I don't understand," she said.

"I said, don't worry about it!" the palm of Anon's hand struck the podium with force. Janice jumped; he caught himself immediately, ignoring the staring audience of eyes to concentrate on her. "I know who Dak'jar is," he told her calmly. "Yes, Anar explained it to me."

"But I've known Dak'jar almost two years," Janice insisted. "I don't understand why he couldn't understand what we were trying to accomplish…"

"Because he couldn't," Anon groaned. "It's not important, Janice; it's not relevant, like Bashir says, irrelevant. The conference is over. I will have a new one on Cardassia with Sisko and Shakaar; not you. All right? That's what I told you, right? That's what you tell them. Anon came to my quarters to tell me the conference was to be canceled; _he_ was canceling it. Not Bajorans. Only the Bajorans didn't want to listen. They can't listen. They never listen. They don't know how to listen."

She was frowning, his patience waning quickly; he jumped up, everyone stiff and at attention. "It's not bigotry, Janice. It's truth. It's tricks…" he searched around the podium to find and wave the data padd he no longer had. "Games! Like I attempted to explain to you. The consulate is a Cardassian-Bajoran affair. The orphans, everything; not Klingon. They want it to be Klingon. He does! Gowron! Winn!" he cited Ch'Pok. "You think I don't know, Klingon who put you here, brought you here? Check his flight log, it's from Bajor Prime. Like Tan says, kissing Gowron's hem behind the Federation's back, not mine!"

"Rumors abound, Gul Dukat," Ch'Pok admitted gleefully. "Major?" he turned for Kira.

"I…" Kira said. "Major, what?" she snapped. "What's he talking about?"

"Who knows," Ch'Pok shrugged. "A Klingon conspiracy of some sort, no doubt. In the meantime, Major, the question is put to you about agreeing -- "

"To be a liaison," Janice said, "between Anar and Captain Sisko."

"Major?" Ch'Pok said.

"Yes," Kira waved. "No! I don't know anything about it, but, yes, I probably would have agreed to talk -- Benjamin!" She insisted to Sisko, wanting to know what Dukat was talking about.

"Later, Major…" he shook his head, wanting to know himself.

"Order," T'Lar's gavel banged down.

"Order nothing," O'Brien charged. "She's right. Something reeks here. Someone else was in those quarters. Bajoran, Cardassian, Klingon -- someone! I remember. Never mind what she, or anyone else remembers, _I _remember!"

"That was me," Kira groaned.

"No, it wasn't _you._ It was a hand. I felt a hand. On my shoulder…I don't know. My back…"

"It was me!" Kira jumped up.

"That's enough!" Sisko reminded. 

"Quite," Bashir nodded to Ch'Pok. "It was Kira. With the fractured knuckles to prove it."

"Yes, well, even without the knuckles, it was Major Kira," Odo assured. "Commander Dax and I right behind her."

"We're getting a little ahead of ourselves, Constable," Ch'Pok smiled.

"Talking about Wednesday when we're talking about Tuesday," Odo was following him. "Of course it will be Tuesday by the time we get to Wednesday…yes, Doctor Lange requested a private conference with Major Kira following the day's session."

"1900," Kira verified. "I was late!"

"I am more interested at the moment, Major," Ch'Pok said, "as to why a conference? Private or otherwise?"

"I don't know," Kira insisted. "We never had an opportunity to talk."

"But you did want to talk, Doctor," Ch'Pok prompted Janice. "About? Your Town Elder Anar?"

"Yes," Janice maintained. "Anar was desperate to help all he could with tracking the Maquis -- "

"Alleged terrorists, Doctor," Ch'Pok interjected. "Alleged Bajoran terrorists."

"Alleged Bajoran terrorists," she consented. "Anon was ambivalent about involving Captain Sisko or Major Kira. But I felt with Kira's assistance, Captain Sisko would be more inclined to at least listen."

"And why wouldn't Captain Sisko be inclined to listen?" Ch'Pok smiled.

"I don't know," Janice said. "I don't know Captain Sisko well enough to answer that."

"But you know him well enough to have formed an opinion," Ch'Pok nodded. "It's all right. Gul Dukat's ambivalence toward the Federation is understandable. As is your own apparently. After all, you are Human, though preferring to align yourself with the Neutral community, rather than the Federation."

"Yes, I prefer my Neutral status; I am a Neutral."

"And for some reason far more inclined to trust Major Kira in lieu of Captain Sisko," Ch'Pok nodded.

"Anar is Bajoran."

"As is Major Kira. As is Captain Sisko Emissary to the people of Bajor -- you are aware of that?"

"No…" Janice paused. "No, I wasn't aware…I don't think. Had I been I would never have hesitated involving him."

"So you admit you did hesitate," Ch'Pok smiled.

"Yes, I admit that. I said that, I believe."

"As you exerted your wish to involve Major Kira over Gul Dukat's apparent protests."

"Yes," Janice said. "Anon isn't unreasonable or stubborn, he's cautious."

"Not quite cautious enough, Doctor," Ch'Pok scolded. "For he was caught together with you by four alleged Bajoran extremists none too happy to find the two of you together -- "

"We were talking," Janice replied. "Anon and I were talking."

Ch'Pok nodded. "None too happy to the point that they would, together with their demands for the conference to be canceled -- "

"Yes, they wanted the conference to be canceled," Janice agreed.

"Then why didn't you just point them in the direction of Gul Dukat?" Ch'Pok's hands planted themselves on the table top, his eyes deeply probing Janice's. "Who wanted the conference canceled as well, and save the two of you a great deal of extraneous trouble?"

"Because I didn't want to cancel it," Janice said.

"I beg your pardon?" Ch'Pok cocked his head.

"The Bajoran-Cardassian citizens need a consulate. Hawk will come to realize that in time, I truly do believe that."

"The man had a phaser rifle trained on you, Doctor," Ch'Pok reminded harshly. "Two of his men had phaser rifles trained on you. What happened to terrified? What happened to Gul Dukat's desperate and determined effort to protect you?"

"Anon did try and protect me; he did protect me."

"Oh, please," Ch'Pok turned away from her in disgust. "Please, Doctor, please. Spare us, both of you, anymore of this nonsense -- to summarize," he cited Anon, "and remember you are under oath, Gul Dukat, whether you take it seriously or not, we do. And to summarize; at approximately 1720 you transported to Doctor Lange's quarters. Doctor Lange dismissed her security matron. You and Doctor Lange engaged in a discussion until the arrival of four Bajoran intruders approximately twenty minutes later. For the next -- hour, was it? Hour and a half? Two?" 

"Two, not quite, yes," Anon agreed, listening closely. "I engaged the sauna for 1900. I arrived late. 1930. Somewhere around there."

"1900," Ch'Pok waggled his finger. "If I order a replay of your earlier testimony, I believe you'll hear yourself say 1900 was the time you arrived at the sauna."

"1930," Anon replied. "I'm telling you 1930 now. Ask the Ferengi. It's his program. He'll tell you what time I arrived."

"Is the owner and proprietor Quark of Quark's here in the courtroom?" Ch'Pok turned on the audience with a howl.

"Yes, he's here," Quark hoisted himself to his feet with a scowl. "You know he's here. He had no choice but to be here…What do you want to know? 1930? Sounds about right. 1920 sounds even closer. But, hey. You think I'm going to count slips when I'm looking at bars? Guess again. He engaged every holosuite there's to be had in the house between 1900 and ad infinitum. He could have shone up 1901, never, or somewhere in between. What do I care? Especially since he was late, not early. _Early_, then I might have had to renegotiate the settlement. But, no, he wasn't early. He was there -- 1920. End of story…how'd I do?" Quark sat down.

"Not bad," Garak approved. "Not bad at all."

"Uh, huh," Quark said. "Not so can I say the same for you know who."

"No," Garak agreed. "No, he does become flustered easily, doesn't he?"

"Uh, huh," Quark said. "Short for his old man he is not. Great. Because if you ask me where all of this took place…"

"Why, where do you think it all took place?" Garak blinked.

"The Replimat," Quark clouted him. "Where do you think it took place? The holosuites. Trust me. That's how my luck runs around here."

"Gul Dukat?" the Klingon Advocate was exhausting for Anar to endure, Anon had to be close to his wits' end.

"I said yes to everything," Anon groaned. "That is exactly what happened. When I left I went to the sauna to relax; think."

"And Doctor Lange?" Ch'Pok turned to her. "Do you concur with Gul Dukat's sworn testimony to be your sworn testimony as well?"

"Yes," Janice said.

"How unfortunate." In racing, great strides the Klingon was back at his bench, flipping open his attaché and activating the overhead, forward viewer screen of the auditorium. 

"What are you doing?" Anon blinked as the occupants of the room stiffened again and aboard the Tir, Anar stared. 

"Playing the video, Gul Dukat," Ch'Pok waved unconcerned and unperturbed. "That data padd is only a select sampling of stills…"

"Video…" O'Brien spoke for the masses turning like an obedient wave to gape at the blank viewer screen in anticipation. 

"No!" Anon jumped to his feet with a scream. "Don't play the film! Don't play it!"

"He was already in bed with her…" Bashir mumbled, agog as the rest of them. "Or the equivalency," he said when the screen flashed on with its stark image of what was hardly a bed, nothing even remotely similar, with its two clearly naked players bathing…"What is that?" Bashir lapsed into a peer for the oozing, bubbling slimy liquid.

"Fish oil," Odo grunted.

"What did I tell you?" Quark's knuckles thumped against Garak's breast. "The holosuites." 

"That's enough, Advocate," Sisko was outraged. "I said, that's enough! Turn it off!"

Except it was already bedlam in seconds. Bashir countering "Fish oil?" to Odo's monotone. Dukat still screaming not to play the film that was clearly playing up through and including Leeta's rambling announcement about alternative choices.

"Tan! Sian!" Anar's enraged fist struck the console, activating their neural link as he activated his holographic projector with a barking order to the hovering sentries to go, and a threatening warning to Ziyal. "For the last time, child, I cannot help them, if I cannot help them! I will not sacrifice a daughter who is as much my daughter as you will ever be the daughter of your father and his whore Tora Naprem!"

She heard him, listened, believed, feeling the same, either that or he was as filled with the power of the Prophets as she; the holographic projection worked. Anar was down in the corridor outside the amphitheater tearing the phaser rifle from the Deputy Task Leader's hands. The dumfounded, confounded man managing to gape "First Minister…" before his head spun at an unnatural angle and Anar was turning to face the delayed hail of worthless phaser fire passing harmless through his ghostly image.

"Now!" Anar directed Sian, releasing a string of compressed cylinders, hissing and spitting as they exploded, spraying the corridor with a choking gas, the Special Forces officers dropping, gasping hopelessly for air. Sian was through the doors of the amphitheater before the first explosion. Aboard the Tir Anon's sentries were long gone, through the airlock and on a rampage down the Promenade, its startled patrons hastily scrambling out of their way as scattered security quickly called for reinforcements in an attempt to find out what was going on. Anar's holographic projection met Anon's squad at the archway to the corridor, the station's ventilation system fully engaged to clear the last of the dizzying fumes and allow the sentries passage through to the amphitheater. 

Inside the hollowed halls of the Federation's courtroom the giant Tan had already reacted to Anon's howling screams to abort the video before Anar's voice penetrated his skull demanding the same. Raising his phaser rifle to shattered the viewer screen, Tan missed, Damar knocking his arm aside with a cruel laugh, gloating as he drank in the scrambling, frightened couple on screen; it should have been Damar's last hurrah; he got lucky. The doors the amphitheater opened, the anticipated surge of Special Forces security producing only one; a single officer a step ahead of several small explosions behind him in the corridor. It was the so-claimed acting Commander of the Bajoran Special Forces on a determined and maddened run down the aisle, his phaser rifle targeting Shakaar's and Sisko's forces as he shouted for Tan and Pfrann to secure the room; Pfrann already taken to the air. Like an acrobat clearing the tops of the seats as he jumped to secure Janice, a phaser rifle in one hand, his descent proceeded by a spinning series of small discuses that he pulled from his waist to let fly with deadly accuracy and razor-sharpness. One whirled past Sisko, slicing his arm to burrow itself in the chest of a security officer.

"That's the son-of-a-bitch from the platform!" O'Brien barked over the raging shouts blending in an incoherent, deafening roar.

The other son-of-a-bitch apparently; the younger one. Not the one with white hair. Their unexpected visitor was a Bajoran male of about thirty, thirty-five. Tall, tanned, healthy. His face contorted, there was something almost familiar in the features distorted by their strained, angry eyes and twisted mouth. Sisko stared at the Bajoran listening to his barking orders for the Cardassian squad and Dukat's screams for Lange.

"I have her!" Pfrann grabbed Janice protectively up in his arms, shouting back to his brother, directing the Bajoran to secure Rebecca Sorge as a hostage as he trained his field unit on the Changeling.

By that time the doors to the amphitheater had open again and: "Fifteen," Odo counted with a nod, additional Cardassian sentries entered to join the ranks of the ten already there. Somewhere between there as quickly as the madness rose it dipped abruptly to an uneasy silence; a standoff between Special Forces; forty, at least, and twenty-five Cardassians.

"Pfrann…" Lange was beside herself, clutching at the arm holding her. "No, Pfrann, don't. Please don't…"

"It's all right," he sought to reassure her. "Calm yourself. They can't hurt him; they wouldn't dare."

"Him?" Bashir interjected angrily. "Are you mad? The woman's had a severe brain trauma -- "

"Don't touch her!" Pfrann's foot arched quickly up and forward, his boot planting itself sharply in the pit of Bashir's stomach. "I'm sick of you touching her!"

"Julian!" Dax said as he crumbled to his knees and Worf rolled his eyes.

"That had to hurt," O'Brien agreed.

Yes, Sisko was sure it had. "Doctor?"

"Quite. I'm fine," Bashir groped gratefully for Dax's helping hand. "As neither does it change anything. I'm telling you she could have a seizure."

"Anxiety attack, at least," Sorge likewise eyed Janice warily. "You're frightening her, Dukat, as much as you're trying to help her." 

"No, you're frightening her," Pfrann insisted. "Stay back, all of you… All of you," he warned Odo. "Release Anon now or die."

"Yes, well," Odo glanced over the field unit holding him hostage rather than the phaser rifle holding Rebecca Sorge, "apart from I am not the one holding Dukat." To where about half the available security in the auditorium were attempting to pretend to be interested in attempting to. That video playing overhead highly, and rather starkly effective in casting Lange into a suddenly different and unfavorable role, regardless of how it cast Dukat; Odo doubted if anyone cared about Dukat. Clearly Lange, yes. It wasn't sympathy playing the otherwise stoic faces of the security staff protecting the amphitheater, particularly the Bajoran half. "You can't be serious."

"We are," the Bajoran holding Rebecca Sorge corrected and something like an electrical force struck Odo in the upper quadrant of his chest. It stung enough to where some could say it hurt. More disorientating actually, rather than pain. However the next thing Odo knew he was the one being helped up by Captain Sisko from off his knees.

"A taste, Dominion," Pfrann sneer was waiting. "Care for another?"

"No!" Sisko halted his Constable.

"Then release Anon," Pfrann demanded. "We've had enough of you. We want to go home. That's all we want to do!"

Sisko glanced from him to Lange listening to her repeated pleas and the Sentinel's continued faltering attempts at reassurance. "I would listen, Emissary," their Bajoran partisan advised; Sisko stared at him.

"Surgical reconstruction," Worf decided was the only logical explanation for the display of Cardassian protection and affection for who had to be one of their own. "Doctor Lange is a sister, perhaps."

"And the Bajoran?" Dax said.

Worf looked at her, from her to Benjamin and lastly to Kira riveted and silently watching.

"Excuse me," Kira exited abruptly up the aisle, unmindful of the sentries who did not stop her. The Bajoran watched her go over, Pfrann's field unit still trained on Odo. Dax studied Lange.

"Well?" O'Brien's question of Benjamin intruded. 

"Well, now I suppose we begin again," Ch'Pok gleefully picked up the cue.

"No, there's no reason to begin anything again," Anon howled exasperated from the witness stand. "Janice is my wife; to be my wife. What do you want to know?"

A fair question to say the least. Sisko forgot Ch'Pok, Pfrann, the Bajoran, even Odo to stare at Anon.

"Wife…" Bashir stammered as O'Brien turned away and up in the stands Garak sat up straight in his chair.

"Wife…" he repeated, speechless otherwise.

"There's no accounting for taste," Quark agreed. 

Ch'Pok chuckled to Anon. "Which it is? Is Doctor Lange your wife, or is she to be wife? A minor difference, I'll grant you, but a difference nevertheless."

Dukat was confused. Tracy Sorge wasn't. "Wife," he said. "And, no, he didn't hurt, or in any way harm or assault his wife, Doctor." Bashir's stare back at him was matched only by Sisko's. Neither of them exactly happy. Neither of them on Sorge's mind. "Nor is Rebecca inclined to hurt anyone," he notified Pfrann. "So if you wouldn't mind I would appreciate the same respect and concern be afforded my wife you are demanding be shown the wife of your brother."

__

"Release her, Pfrann," Anar's voice spoke to the three of them; his son, the Sentinel and the engineer Tan_. "Yes, just release her. That is Sorge, Janice's counselor, you are holding. The other must be Bashir's second opinion. Allow one of them at least to examine Janice and insure her neural transmitter is functioning correctly."_

"Thank you," Sorge secured Bashir's tricorder from the table with a turn for Janice as the Bajoran lowered his phaser rifle slowly. "Just one last request…a rather innocuous one…"

"Yes, well, actually," Bashir interrupted Sorge's advance.

"Julian…" Dax caught him protectively by the arm with Pfrann's immediate warning reminder to stay back.

"Quite frankly," Bashir argued, "I don't give a damn whose wife Janice is, when who she is, is my patient…"

"I said don't!" Pfrann insisted with Bashir's step, his field unit trained and his thumb posed to activate it. "One of you is enough."

"He isn't," the Trill promised calmly, taking the Human in hand, shielding him from the field unit.

"Do I get a kiss if I agree or disagree?" Julian cracked in her ear.

Dax looked at him, feeling his hand touching her hip, and her hands holding his arms; Benjamin was behind him equally as protective and almost as close. 

"You'll have your chance, physician," the engineer Tan spoke up in agreement. "The Gul's wife goes nowhere without the doctor Bashir; those are the orders."

"What?" Bashir said.

"Cardassia Prime," Pfrann smirked.

"Out of the question," Sisko shook his head.

Bashir was angry, eyeing Sisko over his shoulder. "Well, perhaps for you it's out of the question, I'm the doctor."

"Julian…" Dax advised as Sisko flushed.

Bashir ignored her for Sorge. "Damn Federation red tape, and damn you. I'm a doctor."

"So am I," Sorge assured. "One who's already had his career. Rebecca and I will take over Lange's medical responsibility, be it on Cardassia Prime, or whatever it is, damn Federation red tape is right…any objections?" he asked Sisko.

"Your choice," Sisko agreed.

"So it is," Sorge completed his quick scan of Janice; she was fine. Better, if she could sit down.

"Excuse me, but I do have objections," Bashir insisted.

"When we become a democracy, Doctor!" Sisko silenced him.

"You should have settled for a kiss," Dax added quietly clever as she turned him away.

Bashir jerked to startled attention. "Are you serious?"

"No," she smiled. "Not in the least."

"Oh," he said. "Well, I certainly am…" he watched Sorge coerce Pfrann into allowing Janice to sit, the Bajoran remaining in close supervision of Rebecca. "Who the devil cares how many of us he taught? I could probably count on one hand how many living patients he's had in his career." 

"I'm stronger than you are," Dax reminded with a pat of his arm before she took hold of him again, steering him toward their side; the defense. A place he really had belonged from the beginning.

"Don't remind me," Bashir dropped down into his seat with a sullen mutter.

"We can't all be perfect all of the time," Dax misinterpreted his complaint. "Why would anyone think Sorge's opinion would extend to manipulating the data?"

"I suppose if you're talking about my being understandably oblivious to Sorge's deception," Bashir agreed, "you're right. I was talking about me and those persistent irritating feelings of being shown to be inferior to you. Yes, you're physically stronger than I am. And? So? Meaning? My questions to address. Yours would probably be something more like, is there a particular reason I feel a need to find myself making weekly visits to the Infirmary? Is the true meaning of love really to be found sub-categorized under torn rotator cuffs and cracked ribs? For all the medical evidence I have to 'prove' in your particular case it apparently is, I remain emphatically committed it most certainly is not." He settled back against the curved arc of the seat with an annoyed sweep of his hand though his hair. Dax turned away, eventually thinking the better of it altogether, rising to join Captain Sisko and, of course, Mister Worf. 

"It's all right," Bashir nodded. "Quite all right. One of these days, Jadzia Dax. One of these days…what?" he said to O'Brien glowering over the back of his seat at him. "Excuse me if I don't look forward to the day of having to scrape Jadzia off some examining table. But for the grace of God, Janice could have been Jadzia with no one having to spend a week investigating who is responsible…to contrary…" There was bitterness and jealousy in his scowl for Worf. "Not only would we know, we would have been informed rather proudly. If someone rightfully suspects a perversion somewhere, they're quite right, and it certainly isn't mine."

"Uh, huh," was all O'Brien said.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

"Gul Dukat?" Ch'Pok pressed happily. "Come now, there's no reason to quibble about it, why don't you just tell us? Is Doctor Lange your wife, or isn't she?" 

He was still confused by the question. "Anon is my fiancé. We are engaged to be married," Janice offered to set the computer's record straight.

"Engaged," Ch'Pok frowned.

"Similar to a pledge, Advocate," T'Lar identified from her forgotten role as judicial Magistrate.

"No, it's not a pledge," Anon interrupted annoyed. "Janice is Human, not Bajoran. I am Cardassian."

"The word is wife, Klingon," the Bajoran agreed. "Anon waits only for the acknowledgment of his petition for legal binding."

"Yes!" Anon pointed. "That's right. Check the logs. Tan will show you. I issued the petition Sunday, 2300."

"He speaks the truth, Sisko," Tan advised. "Janice is wife to Anon, daughter to the Emperor Dukat."

"My sister," Pfrann jeered at Worf.

"And mine," the Bajoran said. "I am Sian. Janice is daughter to my father Anar, elder of our village."

"I see…" Ch'Pok wandered his way back to his bench.

"A Bajoran-Cardassian township, perhaps?" Dax murmured to Sisko. "Could that have been Shakaar's reasoning behind Lange?"

"Possibly, Commander, yes. If not the reasoning behind the terrorist faction, if not the cause behind the surprise of General Martok's crew."

"What isn't possible at this point?" Dax understood.

"What isn't?" Sisko agreed, tiredly.

She nodded. "Other than one wouldn't think Dukat would knowingly protect the Maquis." Benjamin's head whipped around to her in shock. She smiled. "Far more likely Lange is a Cardassian agent."

"Given those two choices, I would have to say, yes, Commander." 

She nodded again, thinking about the Bajoran Special Forces officer in Quark's. The one with the too-broad face. She stared up at the viewer screen. "If the Bajoran intruders were of Cardassian extraction…race isn't determined mathematically…"

"No, it isn't," Sisko said coldly. "By DNA, Commander. By DNA."

Sorge grunted. "The intruder aboard the Bird-of-Prey was Bajoran."

"I'll trust Doctor Bashir to make that determination, if you don't mind," Sisko turned his back with a sharp nod for Ch'Pok and the viewer screen. "I told you to shut it down, Advocate. There's no reason to further the humiliation of Doctor Lange; thoroughly uncalled for."

"Actually…" Odo cleared his throat. "For identification purposes, do you think we could briefly review that frame…the one where the Bajorans walk in?"

"Commander," Sisko finally directed Dax.

"Thank you," Odo turned to Lange as Dax reset and held the video in suspension. There were two Bajorans rather plainly visible, dressed in Shakaar's infamous yellow jumpsuits, and not at all camera shy about being recorded themselves. Both no older than their late twenties, one of them was doing the talking. The smaller of the two men, moving up to crouch pool side, with the second officer remaining in close proximity, a phaser rifle clearly trained on Lange.

"Which is one calling himself Hawk?" Odo asked, Pfrann's question of his brother also apparently; Dukat's answer the same as Lange.

"That one, yes," Anon pointed out to Pfrann. "The one talking. I don't know who the other one is."

But he would; the same as his brother. The Sentinel's head snapped back to the viewer screen. Two seconds, three, he studied it, a subtle squint evident to his left eye.

"Did you see that?" O'Brien muttered to Bashir.

He had. "Apparently someone has an interest in not only Dominion, but Obsidian technology."

"Yeah, huh?" O'Brien snorted. "So much for Garak's dissertation on the color of ocular lens."

"Yes, well, actually I believe that dissertation was yours…what?" he said to the Chief's immediate bristling bluster. "All I said…"

"Forget it," O'Brien snapped. "I'm not talking to you."

"Not talking to me," Bashir repeated. "Yes, of course, I forgot. 'Et tu Brute?' And all that sort of nonsense. Absurd really. I'm hardly inhuman. Merely calling them as I see them. There's no personal feelings involved…if I allowed personal feelings into the equation it would have been I, not Sorge, manipulating the data; certainly in favor of you." 

"Jin'Mir had the camera," Lange supported Dukat's "I don't know" as far as the second guest star.

"That would stand to reason then why we can't see him," Odo agreed, "since he's the one filming…anyone else?" he trailed his way to the stands and Damar.

"Anar, Constable," the Legate assured. "That is the Task Leader Anar."

"No, it isn't Anar," Anon insisted. "That is the corridor Task Leader, yes. I told you Hawk. Janice told you Hawk."

"Hawk, Changeling," the Bajoran endeavored to spice things up. "The second man is Antel Lin of Gallitep. Kira will know that name."

"I know it," Odo said. "For the record, Magistrate, the Bajoran identified as Hawk is the station security leader to whom five alleged Special Forces terrorists were remanded during the attack at Quark's."

"Yes," Worf concurred. "Captain Anar."

"Interesting," Odo agreed. "Commander?"

"He's also the Special Forces Task Leader General Martok and I approached to disarm and detain in Quark's. That would be several minutes before Mister Worf's encounter," Dax reported.

"Which would be only a few minutes after the Cardassian delegation's arrival," Odo nodded to Damar. "It looks like you win."

"Of course," Damar scoffed.

"And perhaps you," Odo referred that notice to their Bajoran guest Sian, "might have an idea as to why your countryman would insist on taking your father's name in vain?"

__

"Tell him," Anar hissed in Sian's ear_. "Yes, tell him. Tell the bastards what they want to know."_

"Perhaps because he is his brother," Sian said. "Leader of the terrorist faction Anar and Anon sought to corral."

"Sibling rivalry," Odo offered facetiously. "Either that or something to do with this Anar and Anon business in general. The Bajoran world as a whole, not just the terrorist factions, have a tendency not to appreciate former or current Cardassian sympathizers."

The Bajoran didn't bite, Odo nodded. "In the meantime, this uncle of yours, brother to your father, must have a name. Something other than Hawk."

"Hawk," Sian maintained. "His name is Hawk."

"It's not possible?" Dax shrugged.

"It's not," Odo grunted to Sisko. "But it's probably all we're going to get."

His opinion also. "Disengage the recording, Dax and secure it."

"No, I want it destroyed!" Anon insisted.

"It will be destroyed, Dukat. Together with the data padd," Sisko seethed to T'Lar. "Utterly stricken from the record. Is that clear? Your interpretation of evidence is as interesting as Advocate Ch'Pok's!"

"Objection," Odo jumped in. "It is evidence -- as a motive for the Chief's actions if he was aware of the relationship between Doctor Lange and Gul Dukat."

"Hello!" O'Brien said. "No, I wasn't aware! Of course, I wasn't aware!"

"Prove it," Odo nodded to Sisko's burrowing glare. "For the record, Magistrate, at the time of Doctor Lange's Tuesday meeting with Gul Dukat in the holosuites, Quark's was not yet made available to the public. It was, in fact, under the direct control of the station's engineering force, specifically Chief Engineer Miles O'Brien. Who was on duty in Quark's between the hours of 1700 and 0400…what time were you there, Dukat? The truth, this time."

He huffed. "1900. As Ferengi said. Yes, 1900."

"I believe the Ferengi said 1920," Odo returned crisply. "Sure he'll be able to the think of a reason for his memory lapse…in the meantime, were you ever in Doctor Lange's quarters at all?"

"No. I transported Janice to the holosuite at 1900. I spoke with her, yes, on the communication system when I left the Infirmary, but I did not meet her until the sauna."

"How long were the two of you there?"

"Three hours?" he estimated.

"Time on the recording, Commander?" Odo checked.

"Not quite two," Dax said.

"From there where did you go?" Odo asked Anon. "Either you or Doctor Lange? Either together, or alone?"

"My quarters."

"With Tan and Pfrann and fifteen Cardassian sentries," Odo recalled.

"Janice is my wife!" Anon snapped.

"Betrothed to be your mate for life," Odo had the outline. "If your father wasn't already over the edge, I'm sure that would put him there…Objection stands to the recording being destroyed," his nod settled on T'Lar. "We've no interest in the contents, or in the data padd for that matter at all. As far as the recording, we have a distinct interest in the dating, time, placement and occupants of the holosuites, clearly shown to be within the time frame of Chief O'Brien's duty call."

"Logical, Constable," she accepted, still inclined to hang O'Brien over Dukat for the sake of those Federation-Cardassian peace negotiations. "Are you prepared for the defense of your client, Advocate, under this new evidence?"

"It's my evidence," Ch'Pok beamed.

"Accurate," she was forced to admit.

"Secured without permission of either Dukat or Doctor Lange, Advocate," Sisko reminded harshly. "If First Minister Shakaar felt he had a responsibility, it was to remand that recording to myself and Legate Damar, no one else."

"Also logical," T'Lar decided. "Constable Odo's request for dating, placement, timing, and occupants of the recording to be introduced as evidence for the prosecution is upheld. The recording and data padd are to be secured and remanded to Gul Dukat and Doctor Lange as their property, Commander Dax, upon the close of these proceedings." 

"Understood," Dax said.

"Objection…" Ch'Pok shook his head.

She ignored him. "Sanctions are imposed, Captain. Major Kira is ordered arrested and detained under contempt of court."

"Arrest…" O'Brien gaped.

"Chief!" Sisko said.

"What Chief?" he insisted. "We're under siege for crying out loud. In the middle of a damn hostage situation. Why do you think she's agreeing to the tape being destroyed? Because she wants to live! That's why!"

"Are we hostages of the Cardassian Union, Emperor Damar?" T'Lar inquired. He snorted, she moved unemotionally on to Rebecca Sorge. "Of Sian of Anar, Gul or Sentinel Dukat? Do you consider yourself to be a hostage, Counselor Sorge?"

"No," Rebecca stated confidentially. "Janice's people are in fear for her life; I cannot say as I blame them." 

"In fear only because they have been exposed as her people, Counselor," Ch'Pok waggled his finger at her with a smile for Anon. "Among other things that would be a direct violation of the agreed protocol for this conference, wouldn't it, Gul Dukat? The Neutral Bajoran representative, in fact a partisan of the Cardassian government? Tainted, Gul Dukat. Tainted at the very least. Of course you and I both know it goes much deeper than that, doesn't it?"

Anon looked at him. "I had no relationship with Janice at the time the protocol was drawn."

Ch'Pok chuckled. "No relationship? None at all? Come now, do you really expect us to believe upon meeting Doctor Lange for what? A few hours? You fell so helplessly, and hopelessly in love you could think of nothing beyond petitioning your government for a legally binding union of marriage?"

The Klingon was clever, not necessarily funny. "No, of course I don't expect you to believe that."

"Good," Ch'Pok produced a new data padd from his attaché to wave. "Because neither does the Cardassian Union. Your petition for marriage has been denied. Something to do with residency requirements."

"What?" Anon blinked as Damar laughed..

"Duty, Dukat. You remember that, don't you? Duty? Loyalty? To the Union, above even me?"

"Oh, yeah, right," O'Brien scoffed. "Like I said -- "

"Chief!" Sisko was back at the bench, pressing him down into his seat.

"Does he recall it's a long walk home?" O'Brien insisted. "We're talking to Dukat. Am I the only one who realizes we're talking to Dukat? Am I the only one who gets it? I don't think so. He said as much himself. What's he care?" 

"That won't detour us, Advocate," Janice assured Ch'Pok. "I am a Neutral. If I have to establish myself as citizen of any world to marry Anon, I will."

"Good luck in your quest, Doctor," Ch'Pok's smile strolled from her past Dax and Worf. "Begrudging acceptance of each other's differences is one thing. But I fear you'll find there are few states even within the Federation so comfortable with embracing integration of the species as to openly invite you into their fold. Insofar as the more conservative of governments? Well, that natural aversion is understandably a hundred fold."

"Do you think he means us?" Dax batted her eyes at Worf.

"Yes," his rolled.

"Therefore, if it wasn't less than a day you found yourself bewitched by Doctor Lange, and apparently it wasn't," Ch'Pok inclined his head to Anon, "would you mind telling us just how long you and Doctor Lange have known each other?"

"In other words it either was Sunday," Dax announced her return behind Sisko and the Chief, "or you and Lange are, and were, in violation of the conference's drawn protocol of no previous association."

"Yes, Commander," Sisko said quietly.

"He's foolish if he answers," Dax smiled at Bashir shifting in his seat beside her.

"He's foolish for sitting there," Bashir assured.

"True," Dax said. However Dukat was sitting there, had been sitting there now for over two hours. "Are we sure the Cardassian squadron is halted at the border?"

"That was the last word, Commander, yes," Sisko said.

"So that's not why," Dax shrugged.

"Gul Dukat?" the Klingon said.

"Months," Anon replied. "Eight months, yes. I met Janice in the outer colonies when I was forced to land my transport for repairs after an attempt by a Klingon squadron to destroy us. One of my engineers was killed in the attack. Janice and her village did not ask or care that we were Cardassian. They answered our distress signal, taking us to their home world for surgery and medical treatment. She saved my life and seven of my men. Operations. Ask her. Nine of them. Twelve hours. Janice with only Anar to assist her. She didn't know anything about Cardassians…Mummies," he nodded, "yes, she knows about them. Bajoran mummies. Rigelian fever. She gave us the serum too when we became ill; which she knew we would. Just like them. Everyone was sick with the fever. Tan, Pfrann, all of us; myself included. Thirty-five Cardassians, one Vorta. Twice she saved our lives. Not once. Twice. We were there for two months until the Bajoran government would agree to allow a new transport across the border to secure us and my cargo."

"Interesting," Ch'Pok's crest wrinkled, attempting to recall if he recalled hearing of any such event; if so when; if so where. "You admit then it was several months before the conception of the conference that your affair with Doctor Lange actually began."

"No, it wasn't an affair," Anon groaned, the station's computer struggling to coherently communicate the heated, rapid dialogue. "I knew Janice, yes. I met Janice, yes. Fell in love with her; I had nothing to do with her, no. Never. I did not want to complicate her life; my life. I have no interest in populating the galaxy with half-Human, half-Cardassian orphans, I have better things to do! When I met her again I realized I am not the one complicating anything. You are. You don't like it, too bad. You don't have to like it; I do. I love it; Janice. And she loves me. I did not want her here; I had no idea she would be here. I knew what would happen to her; what you would do to her. I tried to explain that to her -- look what you did to my wife!" he shrieked. "For three days I could not go to my wife, know anything about my wife, only what Tan, and Pfrann, and Anar could tell me; Infirmary, Anon. Janice is in the Infirmary. Dead Bajorans, Cardassians, Klingons ten thousand kilometers from Terok Nor…Mister Damar!" his rage turned on Damar. "Move, you will never even live, ever live to move in her direction!"

"Like I said a _long_ walk home," O'Brien nodded. "A _long_ walk home."

"Actually I'm more interested in the Klingons ten thousand kilometers from Terok Nor," Dax confessed.

"Indeed," Sisko said, transfixed on Anon. "Can you back up what you claim, Dukat?"

"We can," Sian interjected. "I have personally issued the order to the UFP for the Klingon squadrons in the sector to stand down by order of Shakaar. The path to the border is clear, and is to be clear; the Federation Assembly concurs. As is Gowron aware if they refuse they will be engaged by the combined forces of Starfleet and Bajor."

"A hell of a damn bluff to back up if it isn't," O'Brien confided.

To put it mildly. "Advocate?" Sisko insisted.

He smiled, his hands spreading in an innocent shrug. "Just another example of the reasoning behind Chancellor Gowron's insisting interest in the Alpha Quadrant. If we are there, we are there naturally only to insure sanctity of the sector…but then it is a frightening day, isn't it?" he addressed the audience. "When terrorists feel confident enough in their power to boast control…over who is it? The combined forces of Starfleet Command and First Minister Shakaar no less? A frightening day. A very frightening day… and, of course, while interesting, Gul Dukat, your admitted association with Doctor Lange…and your and her admitted association with one could say _rival_ group of the terrorist faction responsible for the massacre at Quark's…"

"They had nothing…" Anon said tightly.

"Clearly some sort of rivalry," Ch'Pok's smile remained. "They're brothers, after all, I understand? By his son's own words. Brothers. This Bajoran Town Elder and terrorist leader calling himself Hawk?"

"Nothing," Anon insisted. "Their fields were dead, their people. The Klingons had taken everything from them."

"Of course we did," Ch'Pok nodded. "What haven't we done, Gul Dukat? What atrocity haven't we committed?"

"I gave them rations. Replicators. _Phaser rifles_. They refused them. They are a peaceable people. Anar is a farmer. Sian is a farmer…grapes, wine, vineyards."

"And their brother, uncle, is a terrorist. A proclaimed known scourge of the Bajoran outer colonies," Ch'Pok grinned. "Not very wise on your part, Gul Dukat, to put supplies and the potential of weapons within the reach of who very likely could have been Maquis. May have been Maquis at that time. You couldn't have known this Hawk and his troop weren't. At the time of your encounter with Doctor Lange and her village elder Anar, diligent though the Cardassian Union may have been in routing out Maquis cells, you hadn't yet succeeded in purging the galaxy of their numbers; you were close. But you hadn't yet completed your task -- of annihilation," his lips pursed, heavy and moist. "Annihilate them, Pfrann. Annihilate them, Tan. With the clearly willing and able assistance of his own brother Anar, annihilate the terrorist leader Hawk and his band of Bajoran Maquis…They are Maquis, aren't they?" he nodded. "Correctly identified by this Anar to Doctor Lange as Maquis; surviving obviously. And I would suspect, if we were to probe this story deeper, inadvertently aided, abetted, and _supplied_ by you when you left your downed transport unattended, your men and you accompanying Doctor Lange to her troubled and ravaged home world."

"No," Anon said.

"I believe you mean yes, that is what happened," Ch'Pok corrected. "Yes, why you know so much about this troop. Yes, why you were so concerned for Doctor Lange's safety from the moment of your arrival and alleged discovery of her involvement in the conference. Yes, why this town elder would even be here to offer you his assistance in routing out his brother and troop. You knew, Gul Dukat, you knew. As did Doctor Lange know. Clearly this elder Anar and his son Sian as well. And when it was all over…" he picked up his data padd. "'One hundred and sixteen innocent civilians lay dead with their forks still in hand' amid scores of security, Klingon officers, the Cardassian associate Mister Paq, and 350 additional wounded, by far the majority of them civilians as well. You knew, Gul Dukat, you knew. Both you and Doctor Lange, from the first moment of the first disruptor firing, without a doubt knew who was responsible, and yet both of you chose to remain silent…until the attack turned personal; not against you, but against your wife early Tuesday night. May your gods and prophets have mercy on your uncaring, selfish souls," he tossed the data padd back on the table in disgust. "I wouldn't think either of you will find much sympathy anywhere else. Certainly not here; certainly not from me…or any member of the Klingon Empire. For the record, Magistrate, Chancellor Gowron wishes me to convey how he is appalled by the events of this past week. To where Gul Dukat claims appalled, Chancellor Gowron is appalled and remains steadfast in his commitment of allegiance with the Federation, her Neutral brothers and sisters, and the preservation and protection of the Alpha Quadrant in general."

"So noted."

"Thank you," Ch'Pok's head bowed in a moment of respectful silence. It snapped back up as quickly however with the announcement, "But that is not the point, is it? The massacre at Quark's? No. Hardly the point we have assembled here today to discuss. Not Monday, Tuesday, but rather Wednesday, and Chief O'Brien's alleged assault upon Doctor Lange. That is the reason we are all gathered here…and therefore I ask you, Gul Dukat," he nodded, "Doctor Lange, as well, feel free to comment if you so wish to. Did it ever occur to you? Either of you? That those responsible for Doctor Lange's ailments and ills may have in fact been those same Bajorans rather than Chief O'Brien?

"Could it have been they? Them?" he strode back and forth before Anon on the witness stand and Janice seated at the prosecution's bench. "Those responsible for Monday? For Tuesday? Is it such a reach to suspect them guilty of Wednesday as well? Chief O'Brien as much as victim as the two of you? Would it be a gamble? Little more than a guess to suspect Doctor Lange's assailant to be Hawk of the evening before, merely following through on his threats and mingling a little pleasure with punishment?"

Anon was staring at her. "I don't know…" Janice said haltingly, uncertain. 

"Or," Ch'Pok was saying, "was it in fact you, Gul Dukat? Are you responsible for what happened to Doctor Lange, your wife? Either due to the unrestrained fervor of love, or anger when by Wednesday she, not you, had failed to secure that incriminating video from this Hawk, brother to this town elder Anar? We've only your word you never met with your wife on Wednesday…we've only your word on much of this, and please!" he demanded. "If there is a shred of common decency in either of you, if is possible for either of you to respect how an innocent man's life is at stake, I ask you, both of you, to think before you speak, and when you do speak, is it possible for it to be the truth?"

"The Bajorans…" Anon said slowly, letting the Klingons insults to Janice and himself slide, listening to Anar's hounding, pounding effort to convince him Hawk was responsible, not the Federation's O'Brien regardless of what the Federation said in their twisted, confusing version of justice and laws. "Yes, that's possible… accurate…"

"Move to dismiss!" Ch'Pok whirled on T'Lar with a shout, his audience thunderstruck to silence. "Any and all charges against Chief Engineer O'Brien! By the accuser's own words, by those of her mate's, Doctor Lange does not know, Gul Dukat clearly maintains his suspicions of others' involvement."

"Granted," T'Lar's gavel struck, and it was over. The charges dismissed. The hearing adjourned.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Over. Sisko stood there in the amphitheater.

"Yes!" O'Brien was up out of his seat, the place in an uproar; it sounded that way to him anyway, a veritable din. "I'm free! Is she serious? I'm free?"

"Yes," Sisko answered, feeling the Chief tugging and pulling on his arm; Bashir pounding and shouting in triumph behind him. He stared at Ch'Pok, the Advocate quietly and dutifully gathering up his collection of data padds, a pleasant, satisfied smile on his face.

"Dismissed?" Anon repeated, poised to spring from the witness seat. "What does she mean? I can get down?"

"You can get down," Odo busied himself in collecting up his own assortment of padds he had little opportunity to use as the Gul swooped down to collect Lange.

"Janice!" She was in his arms, collapsed and breathing heavily in his arms. For the first time in three days he was holding her while the Federation slowly turned from their celebration to watch them in amazement; he didn't even notice them. If he noticed, he gave no indication. "I'm sorry," he swore. "I tried, Janice. I tried."

"You were wonderful," she gasped against his shoulder.

Wonderful? No, he wasn't wonderful. They hurt her. He hurt her; O'Brien, Hawk, someone. "No, she's all right…she's all right," he shooed away the lingering concerned hands of his brother and Tan.

"Yes, she's all right," Odo excused himself past Leeta trotting up to ask the same question. On by Garak stumbling by in frozen shock, with a call for Quark.

"What?" Quark halted with a whine. "I put in a public service announcement, all right? I put in a public service announcement. I think there's a limit to my responsibility for what goes on if no one's going to bother to listen."

"Yes, well," Odo grunted. "Recommended maximum exposure for Humans and other beings comprised of 65% water? That public service announcement?"

Quark thought about that; he should have thought harder. "We're talking adults. We're talking two consenting adults. That doesn't figure into someone's equation?"

Odo supposed it could. "In some other universe."

Quark nodded. "Sounds better all the time. Look. I tried to tell him she wasn't a spy. She told her he wasn't a jerk. I already knew he wasn't a lover. Anything else you want to know, ask Garak."

"I suppose I should have known that as well," Odo admitted, ogling Leeta introducing Rom to Pfrann, Tan, and the Bajoran Sian, all three of them gracious enough to feign an interest in meeting him in return. Odo shook his head. Not quite sure he could, or wanted to understand where Leeta and Rom might fit into the scheme of things. For some reason it seemed simpler, if not safer to meander his way for Sisko with an offer to hold his hand; if the Captain wanted it held. He probably did. Metaphorically anyway.

"Are you all right?" Anon gingerly touched the neural transmitter. "Where did they hurt you? Your throat? Your head? Bashir's reports said all these things I couldn't begin to understand. I need you to tell me what they are."

"I'm fine," her smile promised him. "Perhaps just a little more absentminded?" 

He sighed. His arms wrapped protectively around her, staring over her shoulder into the silent attention of Sisko. "_Now_ will you come to Cardassia with me?"

She laughed. "Do I have a choice?"

"No," he said. "You have no choice; none."

"Then I guess, yes," she kissed his cheek. 

His eyes closed, his head dropping to bury itself against her neck; his hand supporting the back of her head. "I love you," he said before he kissed her, there for all the worlds and galaxies to see. 

"Like father, like son," Bashir ventured in amusement to Sisko's involuntary shudder.

"Actually, Doctor," Sisko answered quietly. "I was about to say he has a courage his father could only hope to have." He took a step forward, and then two. Dukat was waiting for him. Insolent. Arrogant. Honest. Fascinated on one hand, Sisko had to admit, it was unbelievable on the other; impossible to accept as true. 

"You want your conference, come to Cardassia with Shakaar to speak to me; six months. Janice's prognosis for recuperation."

It was more of a challenge than an invitation. Dukat doubting him as much as he doubted the Gul. Sisko accepted it anyway. "We'll be there," he promised.

"We'll see," Anon strode off on a quick march up the aisle and out the exit. His arm around his wife, his brother in step at Lange's side, the Bajoran, the Sorges, and his small army following. Damar left alone to follow last, alone, or not at all.

"Dukat," the Emperor snorted with a chuckle. "You know Dukat, Sisko, as well as I."

Sisko knew Dukat. And that was not Dukat; in name only. "Words of advice, Legate. Rather than destroy that young man's career, if I were you, I would do what I could to preserve it. You just may find he is exactly what Cardassia needs; exactly."

The chuckle was louder, a mocking guffaw. "Threats, Sisko? Federation threats? You shock me."

"Words of advice, Legate," Sisko shook his head. "Words of advice, that's all."

"Like Dukat," Damar's parting nod was sharp, his stride up the aisle heavy and alone.

"As neither would I," Sisko agreed, "even dare to blink wrong in Doctor Lange's direction, you're so right about that." His next stop was Ch'Pok.

"Was that necessary? Was that even necessary?" Sisko fists struck the table in fury, anger, rage; he could not see for the fire blinding him.

The Advocate's placid smile remained. "We have a proverb, Captain…"

"Damn your proverbs! The sins of the father are not the son's; not that one's. That young woman is innocent -- "

"Of any salacious act I care to attribute to her?" Ch'Pok interjected; Sisko stared at him. "As you have a saying," Ch'Pok picked up his attaché with a nod, unperturbed and not at all dismayed. "If you can't take the heat, it's probably wisest to stay out of the kitchen."

"Get off my station," Sisko's finger thrust itself toward the door. "And make it a long time before you're back!"

"Oh," Bashir said when Sisko stepped away to approach Dukat. "Oh, well, yes, I suppose if one wants to look at it that way," he agreed charitably. "I could see where one might attribute some form or another of courage to Dukat…I guess," his grin returned with a shrug. His hands finding their way into his trouser pockets, his heels starting to rock as he rocked and he swayed, bobbing his head up and down in the face of Commander Dax.

"Good gracious, Julian," Garak could feel himself growing dizzy, wondering if Bashir wasn't apt to rock himself right off his feet and end up in a crumbled heap on the auditorium floor.

"Five strips says someone helps him," Quark quipped.

"Five strips it's possible they do," Garak breathed. "Merely a wonder which one?"

"Six to one, half a dozen to the other," Quark shrugged. "My latinum's on the Klingon."

"Mine, too," Garak agreed. "Oh, yes, mine, too."

"Maybe?" Bashir teased Dax. "I don't know, what do you think? Is it courage? Does it take courage to cross those forbidden territorial zones and interracial lines? Much? Little? None at all really?"

"I would say…" Dax began carefully, tactfully.

"You disagree?" Bashir interrupted to look up into the groaning, growling face of Mister Worf baring down.

Worf blinked, surprised to be confronted, surprised to be caught reacting to Julian's harmless, though certainly flirtatious taunt of Commander Dax. His shoulders straightened, his retort, while ludicrous, was appropriately contained. "I was not even aware Humans and Cardassians could mate."

"Oh," Bashir said. "Well, I rather suspect it's less a question of can they, rather than a question is it morally, socially, or for that matter politically acceptable that they do? Actually," he said, "I've often wondered if we were to remove the stigma associated with inter-species mating, or marriage, we just might find it startling the sheer number of races who can quite successfully inter-propagate. Yes? No?"

"Oh, well, yes," Garak nodded. "Yes, I would have to agree with that, Julian, to extent. Ziyal, clearly an example of what you say to be true."

"None better," Bashir agreed. "And then there's Kira and Chief O'Brien…"

"Don't even…" O'Brien threatened.

"What?" Bashir said. "Don't even what? All I'm saying is Kira's ability to carry a Human child in surrogate with little, very little intervention, actually, is another example of cross-species compatibility. I'm hardly up to suggesting anything else; certainly not anything provocative, or even close -- what on Earth is the matter with you?"

"Nothing," O'Brien assured. "Nothing's the matter with me. I'm just sick of hearing it, okay? I'm sick of hearing it, listening to it, anything, everything, especially you."

He was lying, of course. He was angry. Very angry. Janice's romantic allegiance with Dukat prickling his sense of decency the same as it prickled Kira's; tormented hers. "Oh. Well, you'll get over it," Bashir smiled. "I've called Keiko, by the way, explained everything; she's en route. I'm telling you so that you can be as angry with me as you feel is appropriate and necessary and then we can go on from…complete the cycle," he nodded to O'Brien's hardened expression and blanched drawn face. "Bury the hatchet. That's important to me for reasons other than it's entirely possible neither of us will ever know to what physical extent you are responsible, if you're responsible at all. With induced psychosis and the convenience of Janice's holographic implant, it's plausible who you attacked in a rage, thought you were attacking, was Keiko. We can explore that option, if you like. I'm inclined to suggest we do explore it, if only to set your mind at rest. But then I know you Miles Edward O'Brien. Beneath that rough, gruff, hardworking, no-nonsense exterior you're a man of principles. And I'm not confident you're confident you are innocent; which you are…

"Utterly…" he reached to help himself to a glass of the Chief's water. "Except, of course, in the instance of disobeying a direct order and going to Janice's quarters in the first place, thereby putting yourself in the situation to begin with. Though, I rather suspect Captain Sisko's more than inclined to overlook that minor transgression, if not wash his hands of the whole damn nightmarish week, the same as the rest of us, and move onto bigger and better things…

"Definitely inclined," he nodded to the interruption of Sisko's fists pounding down onto the table and his demanding order for the Advocate to take his leave now, then, and on high.

He did. Bashir sipped his water, smiling down into the cup, watching the prancing departing figure of Gowron's legal counsel. "Quite. Wouldn't you like to tell them all to go to hell? Klingons, Cardassians and the like…present company excluded, of course," he reassured, continuing on to the Chief. "Still, I wouldn't gamble on being so lucky Keiko's as apt to overlook all aspects; why should she? Confident her husband's not a murdering rapist, doesn't guarantee she's as confident he's not stubborn and hotheaded…" he started to chuckle and then laugh. "For that matter, harbor some secret desire to be a philanderer however inept. If I were you I'd be on my best behavior for the next millennium or so; I would."

"No more nights out with the boys," O'Brien walked off. "I'll remember that."

"Yes, well, I remember that also," Bashir called after him. "There's no reason to get carried away. That's the whole damn point. There's no reason to get carried away… true or false?" he verified.

He was met by silence; momentarily. "Um, yup," Rom nodded. "Yup, I would say that was true."

"And people wonder with my lobes why I'm a bartender," Quark bemoaned to Garak. "At least when they're drunk you know they're not supposed to make any sense. Go figure, huh? Go try and figure out the rest of them." He walked off.

"Yes, well, I wouldn't say I wasn't making any sense," Bashir protested.

"Julian…" Dax shook her head in an effort to discourage him.

"Actually, I thought I was making a great deal of sense…"

"Julian!" her hand clapped over his mouth.

"Oh!" Leeta squealed with a pleased hop up and down. "She did it! She did it! I've been waiting for _years _for someone to do that!"

"Glad to oblige," Bashir gently removed Dax's hand from his mouth. "No, I'm not angry, not even annoyed…"

"You just don't seem to know when to stop," she explained.

"I know," Bashir planted a light, and certainly daring kiss of forgiveness down on the back of her hand. "Worth it even sometimes."

"Yes, well…" Odo cleared his throat as Dax tried very hard not to react.

She failed. "Oh, you!" she snatched her hand away with a hammering strike to his sternum.

"What me?" Bashir laughed in between gasps for air and stabbing pain. "I was only kidding."

"No, you weren't kidding," she insisted, starting to laugh herself. "You know you weren't kidding. Julian Bashir, you are impossible." She continued to laugh. The two of them like two fools; giddy, hysterical, contagious. It felt good to laugh. Even Garak was starting to chuckle. Rom giggling beside Leeta's girlish cackle.

"Something I missed?" Quark was back.

"Yes, well…" Odo delayed only to conduct a brief, though thorough search over Worf's solemn face for any signs of true trouble; there wasn't any. "No. Not really."

"Oh," Quark said. "Well then I guess I won't be raining on anybody's party if I ask about the bunch of dead guys you've got lying out in the corridor?"

He was correct about the lying around part. Dead, Odo wasn't so sure about. "Special Forces," he identified to Sisko what was obvious. Namely the group of Bajoran Special Forces responsible for maintaining security of the corridor and the apparent reason why they failed to respond to the siege beyond the hallowed doors of the amphitheater. A failure Odo had, out of sheer habit, attributed to the appearance of Dukat's group; he probably still attributed it to them. "Still, I suppose I should make a report to keep things tidy."

"Yes, Constable," Sisko said. "Doctor?"

"Heavy stun," Bashir confirmed Odo's impression, reporting what appeared to be the general rule with about half of them. The remainder, while likewise living though unconscious, had apparently been downed from the introduction of some gaseous mixture or another. Odo picked up one of the ruptured cylinders likely responsible, as well as likely related to those short, bursting explosions they had all heard on the heels of the Bajoran Sian and his vaulting entrance into the amphitheater.

"One would hope, anyway," Odo grunted, not seeming to recall any of the Cardassian sentries sporting breathing apparatus. 

Quark nodded. "That's what I'm saying. Forty-seven people left before me and count, I'm the only one who came back. It's not like you can't see them…"

"No," Odo agreed.

"But," Quark said in all fairness, "it's also not like you can't get around them. Through them. Over them. By them…" he stopped to sniff the air. "What's that smell I smell?"

"Harmless," Bashir answered. "Perfectly. More a tease…not to say there aren't distinct residuals of some organic biocide, because there are. I can probably have it isolated for you in about an hour. In the meantime apparently the interest wasn't to cause death or any significant injury…"

"I'll trust you to verify that, Doctor," Sisko said, far less concerned with Shakaar's forces than he was with the station's ventilation system.

"Quite," Bashir shelved his tricorder in preparation of calling for transport. "We've had a number of discharges, so why not see what we can do about filling those examining beds again?"

"As well as the morgue," Dax's cool touch needlessly reminded him of the one or two security officers inside who hadn't fared as well as the others.

"As well as the morgue," Bashir agreed. "Yes, well, there we can simply stacked them up with the others."

"Ready the Defiant to escort the Tir, Mister Worf," Sisko directed, the instructions not meant to convey disinterest. Get Dukat and the rest of them out of there was the best idea. He retreated back into the amphitheater to do just that with the army waiting inside and the remains of their one or two brothers.

"Yes," Worf turned in anticipation of Dax's immediate accompaniment; she hesitated.

"No, it's all right," Bashir said generously. "I can manage."

She smiled, more interested in seeing what could be done about forestalling retaliation from the Bajoran sector rather than the proposed Klingon; at least until the Tir was safely across their side of the border.

"Yes, well," Odo was reading her mind, "security's probably a good as place as any…any number of empty beds available there for the dead or the living."

"We'll take it," Bashir activated his com badge.

"Yes," Dax stepped quickly after Benjamin to stop him from ordering transport to the morgue.

Odo ogled Worf. "Yes," he said. "I will ready the Defiant."

"That's the idea," Odo agreed.

Benjamin was standing absentmindedly at the defense bench. He looked up with Dax's quiet approach. She smiled in her trademark pleasantry. "Julian's confident the security squad doesn't require medical intervention. Odo's concurs in recommending we transport them to security for now to sleep it off rather than the Infirmary…and, yes, rather than the morgue," she said. "For the purpose of at least attempting to offset any further conflict, at least until the Tir has embarked."

"That's acceptable, yes, Commander," he nodded.

"Thank you," she said. The bodies of Shakaar's downed security personnel were gone in moments. The squad she requested they adjourn to security as well to await the orders of withdrawal. They just sort of looked at her and filed out, little interest in arguing the point. Benjamin was still just standing at the defense bench. Dax hesitated but then smiled again before departing. "I'll be with Worf aboard the Defiant…Or…" she paused to acknowledge half in jest. "I'll be with Julian attempting to talk him out of stowing away aboard the Tir."

A faint smile cracked Sisko's drawn lips. "Doctor Bashir can be passionate," he agreed, no more or less annoyed with his Chief Medical Officer than he was with any of them, the Chief, or Kira's show of defiance.

"He can be," Dax said and exited. Sisko continued to stand there alone in the amphitheater where he had watched and argued and fought in what turned out to be little more than a vain effort to prevent the systematic destruction of the reputation and career of a young and earnest archeologist by the name of Janice Lange. There was no reason, none. Other than the usual. The old and familiar all is fair in love as all is fair in war. He heard the sound of movement behind him, presuming it was Odo; he was wrong.

"I had one of those days once." Rather like the one Sisko had just weathered. The wily and mysterious Bajoran Town Elder offered his combined years of wisdom and experience to the watchful Federation Captain when Sisko turned around.

Noticeable inference from the station's shielding threatened the stability of the holographic projection waiting for Sisko. Still, the projection was clear enough for him to be able to decipher the Bajoran's features and confirm what he could hardly believe he was seeing; and it explained Martok's bridge crew, if it explained little else. There was something much more than simply familiar about the celebrated face watching him in return with its shock of white hair and soft blue eyes faintly crinkled with their first early signs of growing older.

"Anar..." Sisko quietly savored what was supposed to be the Bajoran's name, mentally inverting it, dissecting it, until with the aid of what was so obvious it could not possibly be denied, it dawned on him. "Adon Shakaar…" Even through the distortion, the Shakaar family resemblance was as stark and unmistakable as the one between Dukat and his son Pfrann. An older brother perhaps? A young uncle? Cousin? Sisko estimated there was about twenty years difference in age between the elder calling himself Anar and Bajor's First Minister Shakaar Adon. 

"The not so honorable uncle," Anar congratulated Sisko's powers of deduction, inclining his head in homage to his far more distinguished nephew, his namesake. "My sister sought to honor me upon her son's birth, born in my image, he was blessed with my name. It was a symbol of greatness among us and greatness to come; a sign from the Prophets, what else could it have been? I have occasionally felt sorrow that I was unable to live up to her belief in my divinity."

"Indeed." Audacity Sisko believed the Bajoran meant. Cowardice, the projection confirmed. "I talk to men," he snapped, condemning, charging Anar to show himself, not some wavering picture.

"Yes, well…" Anar supposed safely aboard the bridge of the Tir, if, in fifty years, he had never shied away from the challenges of Cardassians and the Federation alike, it was probably reasonable of Sisko to expect him not to shy away from this one. "Fine. You talk to men." The holographic projection aboard the station vanished, a moment later replaced by the transported figure of the 'man' Anar neatly, cleanly cutting through Sisko's shields.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

The Bajoran was a virtual twin to Shakaar Adon. Insignificant, subtle differences restricted to age, height, weight; tone. Physical and otherwise. A farmer, shepherd, like Sisko was a shepherd. He had the athletic, taut body of a man half his years. His yellow jumpsuit torn, dirty, stained with his blood and the blood of Martok's bridge crew. His mouth twisted wryly at Sisko's acceptance of the earlier interference and distortion in the hologram of having to do with his security fields rather than intentional deception.

"Otherwise known as poking fun at the Federation's arrogant belief in their impenetrable fortresses," Anar confessed, his blue eyes continuing to twinkle in amusement and delight. 

"The point to your visit, Mister Anar?" Sisko's question was a clipped, harsh and cold as his challenge and expression on his face. The sacrifice of Doctor Lange had been enough for one day. He was not about to offer Bajor's First Minister up to Ch'Pok's altar for the misfortune of having unavoidable ties to some politically incorrect black sheep. The Bajoran reeked of Maquis; he reeked. Had he carried a sign Sisko could not have more certain. So much for Lange's kindest, most gentlest man she had ever met. He was the calculating outlaw Sisko had chased through Quark's, along the Promenade, and traced to the bridge of Martok's Bird-of-Prey. There was power and strength in the man's carriage and tension, and there was charisma. Sisko was uncertain which outraged him more; he took a step closer to Shakaar's dark side, studying it, scrutinizing it. 

"Unavoidable ties..." Anar considered. Born at the dawn of the Cardassian Occupation, his fifty year career in the Resistance took him to the heights and times of the old Federation-Cardassian wars where his assistance and deeds as an Intelligence agent for the UFP earned him the fond code name...

"The Hawk," Sisko pronounced sourly. Odo was right. It was common sense the so-called Hawk would be a man of maturity; in regard to physical age anyway. Sisko didn't necessarily find this man particularly mature; certainly not entertaining as the Bajoran did appear to find himself. 

"A distinction often imitated, and claimed by many as their own. My youngest brother is no exception," Anar agreed. "Where your Changeling may have counted a generous twenty-six of me over the years, I have counted a mere twenty-three. Each one greater and more fearful than the next. From Resistance fighter to Maquis leader. Invincible and invisible...which I was," he shrugged, personally finding modesty or humility a waste of everyone's time. "Still am. Adon insists upon it. I can understand, considering his sensitive position…And I will continue to understand under the condition," his blue eyes met Sisko's black ones, less their amused glint, "my most honorable nephew continues to understand me. But then it does seem somewhat unrealistic for the Hawk to have simply laid down his phaser rifle just because the Federation and Cardassians decided the Occupation was over. Especially when there was so much work left to be done. There really is very little difference between the Resistance and the Maquis, Captain, other than that honorable recognition."

"I would believe in Gul Dukat's own immortal divinity," Sisko assured, "before I would ever believe him to be sympathetic to the Maquis."

"Which Gul Dukat?" Anar grinned and Sisko reacted despite himself. Anar nodded again. "You're right, of course. For all his inherent and apparent differences, Anon is his father's heart. His argument with his father having much more to do with his Prefect's own immaturity rather than Dukat's beliefs or political ambitions. My affiliations, on the other hand, were completely irrelevant. Anon simply extended a helping hand to a group of people in desperate need. Likewise. For some reason I was never even tempted to kill him...or Pfrann," he acknowledged. "Tan, or any of them."

"Something to do with just having one of those days," Sisko prompted when Anar paused to think back over the last eight months and the year or so that had preceded them.

"First there was the Federation-Dominion war," Anar said. "It wasn't completely surprising that so many of us would be divided between maintaining our independent ways or offering our services to the fight. After all, many of my men, as you well know, are former Starfleet officers, no more or less distinguished than you. Fighting Cardassians is fighting Cardassians. The Prophets know they were certainly determined to destroy us...unfortunately," he extended ruefully, "they were as ultimately successful in their campaign, as you were in yours. The Maquis, as with the Dominion threat, are no more."

"Rumor has it," Sisko replied.

"Beware of rumors, Captain," Anar cautioned. "In seeking to prove lies, you run the risk of discovering the truth. By the Prophets, in striving to prove your Chief O'Brien innocent of Janice's assault, the child wasn't revealed to be Anon's mistress, she's his wife. Betrothed to be his mate for life. One of those strict Cardassian social ethics, and Anon really is a stickler for the rules."

"A discipline you might well consider applying to yourself, sir!" Sisko snapped. "Crying foul after the fact doesn't cut it!"

"The child was picked to the bone!" Anar insisted. "For no good reason other than Gowron couldn't resist driving a nail into Anon! What does that have to do with justice and finding the men responsible for Janice's assault?"

"Not a damn thing!" Sisko agreed, and so perhaps this Anar should add a reality check to his checklist. "Doctor Lange should have been excluded from the conference, and the person I see privy to that knowledge is you, Mister, long before Ch'Pok! Information that should have been in my office, on my desk before the doors of this room opened for the first time! Beyond that, I believe we were talking about your day!" Because, quite frankly, Sisko had had enough of his. That included this arrogant Bajoran flaunting his Maquis colors alongside his proclaimed friendship with Anon Dukat and daring the Universe to do so much as blink back. Any of them. From Federation to Klingons, Cardassians and Bajorans alike.

"Then there was this Human archeologist…" Anar drifted off to frown, thinking back to Janice and her distress signal he quite reasonably thought belonged to one of his missing raiders. "Not a week after his Prefect regained control of Terok Nor. My fleet and I had managed to regroup what was left of us after this thoroughly disappointing encounter with the Jem'Hadar and make our way...to a temporary base in the outer Colonies," he eyed Sisko wondering who the Captain was waiting for. Hoping to wander back into the amphitheater to see what was keeping him. The Trill Dax perhaps? Either her or the Klingon Worf? Kira, Anar suspected was in the Temple, demanding an explanation from whichever Prophet would listen and take pity on her outrage over Janice's perceived betrayal. He maintained she was an intriguing woman, Major Kira, one he would like to get to know.

"Then there were the Klingons," he nodded bitterly, seeing what were now struggling fields of food, strewn with the carnage of his troops. "Not exactly civilized themselves. Whose side did you say they were on during the war? Yours? Then there was the Rigelian plague. A downed Cardassian Transport trying to make its way home...It was six months, Captain, before I had a moment's opportunity to look around. And, no, by the Prophets, I swear, I did not just wake up one morning and decide to befriend the sons of Prefect Dukat. It just sort of happened that way. Just one of those days..." he stared past Sisko to the child Ziyal standing between this world and the world of the Prophets a small, glass jar of Janice's purple goop in her hand and so he understood her meaning and message at last; life. A choice of life over death. "Do you have a botanist available to you, Captain?"

"A botanist?" Sisko turned around to frown over the blank and silent displays behind them, and Anar's smile returned, feeling his hand closing over the small jar of purple cream.

"Janice's dream," he was waiting to extend the sample, offer Sisko's frown when it found its way back to him. "Her faith, innocence, belief. Call her affliction what you like. Thirty-five people survived out the last 200 of us not killed by the Klingons, but rather destined to die instead from our wounds, or succumb to the plague. I was one of them. Eight out of nine Cardassians lived of those injured in their encounter with Gowron's finest, and subsequent crash landing on my world. Anon was one of them. Another had plasma burns over 60% of his body; you stood next to him. Can you tell me which one?"

"Not even where you seem to think you are leading," Sisko took the jar to examine it nevertheless. So the Federation was interested anyway. Curious.

"I'll make it simple," Anar offered. "I want a botanist to confirm Janice's dream, fulfill it, at the least respect it. It's the least you and Adon can do."

Sisko looked at him; he nodded. "And I want Hawk and his men pursued and apprehended; prosecuted and confined. Does it really matter, Captain, whose assistance you accept? If a man is dying of thirst, does it really matter whose hand gives him that life-sustaining glass of water?"

"A question that has plagued the galaxy for centuries."

"That's not an answer."

"I don't recall," Sisko's voice rose sharply again, "being asked a question." Threats, yes, he heard them; demands. 

"I had hopes of avoiding some long-winded explanation," Anar finally surrendering to sighing. "Ones I am not inclined to give…No, I am not." Not relate the long and tedious story of how Janice even came to be Shakaar's representative. Of his doubts Shakaar or his collection of Ministers would even be interested in meeting with some Neutral to discuss extending and expanding her archeological grant. Of how he was wrong and should have known. Janice had her ways of getting what she wanted, no example better or more evident of that than he. A farmer. From Resistance fighter to Maquis leader to vineyard keeper…and somewhere in between there to guardian of future's past. The child Ziyal was waiting, clearer than Anar had ever seen her before. The Federation Captain Sisko was waiting as well.

"Would you consider the exchange of a botanist, Sisko," Anar stooped in his arrogance as far and as low as he could go, "for my continued obscurity, and hence the preservation of the reputation of my nephew, sure to be destroyed…" Sisko was stepping back from him, shaking his head.

"Out of the question."

"Then what would you consider?" Anar insisted impatiently. "As inclined as I am to strike Adon down a peg or two; for he knows, Captain, yes, he does know. Has known since the beginning, what you suspect is true. Full and complete knowledge of the impending threat that he refused, not to accept, but to _bend_ to. Shakaar Adon will never bend. Not to terrorists. Not to Cardassians. And certainly not to some Klingon Chancellor Gowron or his political lover Kai Winn or especially me. For all the months of arguing, transmissions, and, yes, threats. Desperate to have Adon release Janice from her commitment because I knew where it would lead; regardless, Captain. Regardless of who ultimately became the Bajoran representative, Hawk was not going to go away. And as much as I cared little about that, I care greatly for Janice. My focus, Janice; My reasons, motives, selfish; I tried, Captain, I did try. Your way, rather than mine. For what? Adon as firm today as he was six months ago, believing as you, I am responsible rather than Hawk, whom he dismisses as some unruly child, though now twenty-seven years old himself. To where I, Adon knows, eternally the Hawk, if not the eternal Hawk, will do anything, if only simply out of retaliation, if only out of spite, if only to spite him. As will he do anything to spite who he believes is me in return…

"Notice I stress believes, Captain," his speech was increasingly rapid, heated. "But then to where I have been accused of being blind to Adon, he is equally blind to me…with good reason, again, Captain, yes. Everything you think, suspect about me is true, was true, for fifty years until eighteen short months ago. Where I am not blind, nor have ever been, is to Adon's value, his worth, heart or his soul, or the desperate need my world has for him, if they have need of anyone…" 

"No less than the absolute and complete acknowledgment and acceptance that the responsibility for this past week lies upon his shoulders, and his alone!" Sisko interjected over the dissertation what _he_ wanted. Damn the excuses, explanations and justifying rational. "Beginning with Sunday, and ending with today!" 

Anar heard him wrong. He peered at Sisko. "Adon? You want Adon to go before the UFP…"

"Before himself!" Sisko's mouth was wet with saliva clinging to his teeth like fangs. "And from there, yes, before me!"

"I'll see what I can do," Anar glanced over the display console that appeared relatively simple to operate.

"You do that!" Sisko's fingers curled around the jar of purple cream, clenching it inside his fist, his right hand aiming for his com badge. "Doctor Bashir, Commander Dax…" 

Anar stopped him, a daring hand around Sisko's wrist. "I really do prefer my lack of public recognition. Call it an acute shyness."

"Indeed." Sisko continued to care little for this man and his cheek; he stared at the hand around his wrist. "What you prefer…"

"Died with me on that platform," Anar nodded. "Except I didn't die, Captain, anymore than you. I count a handful, yes, I did kill by my own hand. Many more that I could have as easily and didn't; Martok's bridge crew doesn't count."

Sisko was silent. Anar eventually sighed again, releasing him with renewed impatience. "Fine. Have it your way. Call your physician to verify Janice's purple goop holds more promise than a cosmetic face cream. I suppose it really is as unrealistic of me, not only Adon, to expect me to remain completely in the shadows. I am asking for botanist. It is my world. My colony; illegitimate though we may be. Another one of Janice's dreams. Legitimacy rather than imprisonment where all the bad Maquis go; for one of my stature, certainly for life. Under those circumstances, if not many others, I trust you will at least be selective in who you choose to introduce to me?"

"Guaranteed," Sisko activated his com badge, answering Bashir's response to his hail. "Yes, Doctor, if you would return to the amphitheater…and bring your tricorder with you." He signed off.

"What about Janice?" Anar reminded coarsely. "I can assist you in securing Hawk…Or are you of the persuasion who believes if you lie down with targs you shouldn't be surprised to wake up with glob flies?"

He answered his own question and the answer was, you are a targ, Sir. One with which, as with any other, Sisko would never consider lying down, regardless of the bounty waiting in the wind. It simply wasn't worth the risk, nor the price. Anar looked away, his voice sour. "Your faith and trust in Anon's abilities surpasses even my initial own; and I knew he was coming. I had been forewarned…on the wing of a bird…" He momentarily trailed off again, staring into the sympathetic face of the child Ziyal. The Federation Captain convinced and thinking _zealot, fanatic_ behind him. "I don't suppose it's ever occurred to you, Captain, some us just feel the Bajoran-Cardassian situation is our problem; our business. The Maquis as much a messenger of that to the Federation, as it was a message to the Cardassians; at least the Maquis I agreed to trumpet…" he was sighing yet again against the silent, unbending steel of Sisko.

"As you should know, Captain," he said, "what Anon sets aside home on Cardassia he does for Janice's sake. No further trauma to her body, her emotions, ideals, and, yes, a thorough unwillingness to jeopardize her esteemed opinion of him. Out here he will think, wonder."

Sisko knew that, remaining as cold about it as he was about everything else. "As does my willingness to acknowledge Anon Dukat's potential in no way guarantees a fan; wait here."

Anar's smile was thin in its amusement, heavy in its mocking disdain. "Do I have a choice?"

Probably. But if Sisko were him he wouldn't chance to take it. He was gone with the jar of purple cream clenched tightly in his hand. Anar's finger trailed absently across the bench console ending at the tips of the thick, blunted fingers of the Cardassian child Ziyal. He looked up; her words grateful and relieved. "Thank you for saving my father's heart and soul."

She knew her brothers well. "For themselves perhaps, child," Anar agreed, not unkindly. "Not for him."

"Dukat," Ziyal understood and it saddened her deeply. "We're all so like him in every way, and so unlike him in every other."

Anar chuckled at her continued use and musing over his words. "The mystery of genetics. What can it mean? If the Universe can explain your gentle blood by virtue of your mother's, it can not explain Anon's or Pfrann's born of other. The possibilities are endless. The implications I prefer not to think on; in fact refuse to. Dukat is the beast he is claimed to be. Born or conditioned. His sons, his sons; themselves, not he. His daughter, as well. As is Hawk my brother, not me. A son of my father, with a soul as black as your father's, weighed and measured the same; by his successes, not his failures."

She was smiling, misunderstanding what he meant by success and failure. "Do you have any children?"

Anar paused. His head dipped. The Prophet guiding her was subtle, though adept. "One son -- that I am aware of. So I can perhaps understand an aspect of your father after all. Less honorable than even he in some eyes no doubt, if I were to tell the whole truth, for I have never been married, or ever pledged…Indeed," he sighed in nostalgia he supposed a little, that time. "The mother's face escapes me. I knew it once. Her name, perhaps. Little more, and not at all well."

She laughed. He didn't. "It's the other ten million souls I have difficulty with, child, not yours so much. Sian's mother died at Gallitep fifteen years before the liberation. If you ask me when the liberation was I would have to think. I was not there; that was the other Shakaar Adon. Sian sought me afterwards to introduce himself together with Dak'jar, Jin'Mir, so many others, I lose count. It was five years or so I believe before we met. Five more before the Hawk became Maquis and eventually Anar. Still ruthless as I had ever been, simply no longer alone." 

"You didn't kill us," she touched his tear-stained cheek he wasn't even aware he was wet.

"Oh, but I did, child," he corrected. "And you killed us. If I dare to believe the Prophets choose wisely in me, I know they choose desperately, also. I am not the Shakaar Adon the galaxy knows, nor will I ever be. Merely a man who has had a revelation in spite of himself."

"When did you die?" she wondered, her question a curious one.

"I haven't," Anar frowned slightly. "Not yet."

His answer seemed to puzzle her; she attempted to shrug it off. "You can see me."

"Hear you also. Not at first, but yes, now."

"Because now you're ready…" she murmured to herself in a manner of attempting to understand. 

"Ready for what, child?" Anar asked interested to know.

She was either uncertain, or unwilling to tell. "They come of their own accord, Shakaar Adon of Dyaan IX," she simply said, her voice drowning in a chorus of bells, the brightness of a light appearing to embrace her. "Future's guardians, as do its adversaries. The chain which must be broken binds not you, nor any charged to your care. Your heart is good, your hand too quick. What you cannot forgive, you must forget. Vengeance is not sweet, but fleeting instead. Think long before you pick up your sword again, remembering the one you call the beast can see and hear the child as well. Do you understand?" 

"Beyond your scolding for Martok's bridge, I lie if I say I do," Anar admitted through the stinging rain of grapes pouring down until silence covered the amphitheater once more and he was alone, a single seed lying on the floor at his feet. He picked it up, engaging the console to issue a priority transmission to Shakaar. First with Sisko's identity marking, followed by one preferred by Kira Nerys, after that, he was out of ideas except for borrowing a runabout and taking a ride.

"Constable…" Sisko exited the amphitheater into the quiet of the corridor.

"Yes…" Odo wandered his way over from the windows and his view of the docking ring where Dukat's Tir sat docked and misleading quiet. "All secure. Just waiting for you."

"Yes," Sisko took a deep breath for some reason, adding to that a lingering gaze down on what appeared to be a glass object in his hand.

"Yes," Odo agreed with a glance over what he now could see was jar; small, purple in color, or its contents were. "Lost and found?"

"Not exactly," Sisko shook his head.

"No," Odo said, supposing the next reasonable question might be, "Everything all right?"

"Angry, Constable," Sisko admitted. "Extremely. Quite frankly, I cannot remember…"

"The last time you were quite as angry…yes…" Odo said with a pensive look over the Captain's shoulder toward the doors of the amphitheater; having an idea it was something Captain wanted to do and for some reason wasn't. "Some point earlier in the week, I would think." 

"Join the club," Sisko nodded.

"Which one's that?" Odo grunted. "Oh, the angry one. Yes, well, I suppose it would have been boring if Ch'Pok asked his last question first."

"That's not the way it works."

"No." So Odo had heard. He took a step around the Captain toward the doors. Call it gut instinct. If he had a gut that's what it would be; accurate at that. Sisko stopped him immediately.

"I'd rather not raise any unnecessary alarm."

"Unnecessary for whom?" Odo verified. "Us, or…who is in there? Can I ask that much? Dukat comes to mind, but that's nothing new. Dukat always comes to mind. A close second behind Quark. But don't tell either of them I said that."

It was likely he wouldn't. "Dukat is elsewhere, Constable, yes."

Odo snorted. "Which Dukat?"

Sisko's retinas were wide, glassy-eyed, streaked with broken capillaries and lack of sleep. Odo nodded. "And six more behind this one, on his heels; if we're lucky."

"Major Kira…Mister Worf…" Sisko touched his com badge.

Odo nodded again. "Yes, well, I guess that explains who you'd rather not cause any undue alarm…" he ogled the doors. "Not us apparently."

"Him, Constable, yes," Sisko acknowledged that much softly. "Secure the corridor; no one in or out."

Other than Major Kira or Mister Worf. Odo had it as far as those who would be granted entrance. Still not quite sure who wouldn't be granted exit; other than him or Captain Sisko.

"And Doctor Bashir and Commander Dax," Sisko added two more names to his growing list of those who was to be allowed in. "Not to leave you out."

"Yes, well," Odo said, "now you sound like Bashir. I can't be left out. I'm not capable of feeling left out…I wonder why," he wondered as Sisko slipped away, "I'm being left out?"

For the simple reason of however inconspicuous his Changeling could make himself, it hadn't work the last time. Sisko stared at the back of the white head sitting at the desk console of the defense bench. The Bajoran stood up with his tantalizing, taunting smile. "Perhaps you'll have better luck than I."

He meant the Priority One transmission to Shakaar carrying the identity marker Sisko. "There were few better than I." The Bajoran boasted his prowess with manipulating the station's systems to suit his needs.

Two at least who came to Sisko's mind. "Third in line, perhaps," he agreed.

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

Bashir's leaned heavily into his elbow propped against the wall of his office just about eye level with Dax's head, his face inches away from hers. "My tricorder?" he teased gaily in response to Sisko's call. "Oh, yes, of course. I never go anywhere without my tricorder."

"Julian…" she said with that Julian look about her.

"What about Dax?" his finger poked her com badge reopening the channel to Sisko. "Should she bring her tricorder, too?"

Benjamin sounded irritable and preoccupied in his reply that one should be enough. Julian was really pushing it. Dax shook her head. "I never said you were going to Cardassia."

"Yes, you did."

No, she hadn't. She said she didn't trust that he wasn't going to try and accompany Lange to Cardassia despite what Benjamin said, and she didn't trust him. She never knew with him. She could never tell with him. When he was joking. When he was serious. When he was just being Julian.

"Julian…" Dax could feel the wall behind her. She wasn't quite sure how she ended up against the wall of Julian's office, but she was there. Julian dangling himself and his tricorder in front of her face.

"What?" he grinned.

He knew what. She told him what when she decided to detour for the Infirmary to see what he might be up to before joining Worf aboard the Defiant where she knew what Worf would be doing. Julian, she found downloading Lange's medical file. She asked him why; his answer was opaque. Something about insuring Sorge had the complete file. That didn't make any sense. Given Sorge's knowledge of Lange's relationship with Dukat, if Sorge was prepared to volunteer his services rather than Bashir, it stood to reason he was well prepared in advance, and that included possession of Lange's complete medical file. Julian's medical tricorder was also out on the console. She asked about that. He referenced his office. Inviting her to search it, along with his attaché to insure he wasn't packing it for a month's long stay on Cardassia Prime.

Dax nodded. That was how she ended up against the wall. A foot race for the office, the attaché that was on his desk, and then once or twice around the desk, Julian already laughing how she was mad, quite clearly mad, and how he had never said he was going to Cardassia, perhaps only in jest.

"Jest?" Dax stared at him. Clearly remembering Benjamin to be infuriated with his insistent insubordination.

"Well, perhaps not jest, exactly," Bashir tailored his rebuttal. "But, no, I wasn't serious, I was annoyed. At Sorge. Perhaps mildly at Captain Sisko -- here, I'll prove it to you," he reached for the attaché she held up and out of reach unless he felt like jumping up and down or tackling her.

"No, I'll prove it," Dax proceeded to dump an assortment of personal articles out on his desk that he proceeded to stare at along with her. Neither of them exactly certain why they were in there.

"No, wait a minute!" Bashir remembered for reasons other than it was his attaché as she groaned "Julian!" now that she had her evidence.

"No, you listen to me," Dax threatened.

He couldn't. He was laughing again. Hysterically, as she backed him toward the wall. Reminding him that while Benjamin might be lenient in allowing his officers the freedom to speak their minds, that leniency usually ended after a sentence or two if their point hadn't been made. If his mind hadn't been changed. And that leniency never extended to crossing the line over into insubordination. Anymore than it extended to overlooking one of his officer's getting it into their mind to take off on a jaunt to Cardassia Prime for whatever the perceived good reason.

"Julian!" she groaned wanting to throttle him, or at least take him over her knee.

"Bajor," he was laughing, continuing to, about not packing for a weekend on Cardassia but rather Bajor Prime.

It penetrated. "Bajor?" Dax said.

"Yes," Bashir began collecting up his sundries of items. "I had this idea of taking Janice; dinner with the Sorges'. Dinner somewhere -- I told you that," he threw something soft at her; a pair of socks. "I couldn't very well show up at the airlock with a weekender in hand, now could I? Not only would that have been presumptuous of me, it would have looked presumptuous of me." He threw something else soft at her; she had no idea what it was and didn't care. "This way I simply look like me; professional. Ready to take a tour of the Bajoran Science Academy with Doctors Tracy and Rebecca Sorge; which is what I was going to invite Janice to do. Certainly benign enough; hardly suspect. Who would suspect?" he grinned falling into paraphrasing an old Terran quote. "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts and minds of men and their attaches alike?"

"But…" Dax said.

"But what?" he laughed as she stared toward the door. "I told you I was downloading the file for Sorge."

She eyed him. From him the attaché that he was packing with his socks, his toiletries and medical tricorder. "Yes, well," Bashir paused at the tricorder, "with a million and one uses I suppose one or two could be made to be creative."

"Oh!" she turned away from him disgust.

"What, oh?" he laughed harder. "Oh, yes, I suppose you never -- "

"That is not the point!" Dax insisted.

He sobered; briefly. "No, the point is Cardassia; and I'm not going to Cardassia; I'm not. It was a thought perhaps…" he toyed with the tricorder, a glint in his eyes that she didn't notice; not at first. "Briefly," he nodded. "Reasonable even. But ultimately what would be the point? What am I going to come away from going to Cardassia Prime? Other than sunburn, a head cold and eye strain?" he smiled, imagining baked, hot sands, and yellow, arid air. Stylized, lifeless cities dotting the endless ghostly terrain. "Obviously if I were going to come away with something, I would be going to Bajor, not Cardassia. But that's certainly out of the question, isn't it? Apparently never even a question."

He was starting to laugh again. Admittedly feeling slightly foolish over his proclaimed infatuation with Janice, never mind the Chief. "All this fuss about Janice Lange and the damn woman's married, of all people, to Gul Dukat."

"Well, you certainly wouldn't be…" Dax said.

"No," Bashir waved, his tricorder just happening to be in his hand. "I would be going to Cardassia because I'm a doctor. And I am a doctor. And, well," he said, "so's Sorge. Let him take over Janice's medical care."

"Julian…" Dax said.

"I'm serious," he insisted still thoroughly amused. "I'm not saying I wish the woman ill health because of course I don't. I like her. I really do like her. I'm just saying it's not necessary that I supervise her medical care; and it isn't. I know that. I realize that…I accept that…"

That was when he moved to turn the tables, starting to back her toward the wall. Her listening to and watching his capricious tease, thoroughly enjoying himself with what he called the freedom between them; and he was right. There was freedom between them. They were very good friends. But somewhere freedom became unfair liberty, and he was taking liberty now; she wasn't sure why. The position they were in was intimate and compromising. And, no, should Worf walk in, while he might not seize either of them to tear them limb from limb he certainly wouldn't like it. Julian knew that. Benjamin's innocent, though puzzling call for them aggravated the situation, heightening Julian's taunt. There was an odd glint in his eyes when his finger touched her com badge; he was intentionally trying to make her squirm. Benjamin's testy answer to Julian's jovial and unnecessary verification was ineffective in displacing the tension. The seconds of silence between them dangerous following Benjamin's signing off again. Dax waiting Bashir out to see what he was going to do, thought he was doing, planning to do.

The door to the office swished open unexpectedly. Julian's charge nurse Michelle Faraday entering with intentions of handing him Dukat's medical file that she had downloaded for Dukat to take home to Cardassia or whatever he felt like doing with it. Faraday was startled by what she saw. To what extent, for how long, Dax didn't stay around long enough to find out. Her annoyance flared to angry embarrassment. She pushed the tricorder out of her face, Julian away and was gone. Michelle watching after her, perplexed and curious until the door to the boss' office closed.

"Yes, thank you," Bashir was nonchalant in accepting the data padd.

Michelle looked at him before she just gave a slight shake of her head. He stepped to exit his office without further comment, pausing to acknowledge. "I'm in trouble now."

Michelle chuckled. "I would say yes."

"Quite," Bashir left, tossing Dukat's medical profile aside as he passed a console on his way out through the Infirmary. Michelle just shook her head again and began picking up the last of the assortment of personal items strewn about the floor.

Bashir caught up with Dax outside the Infirmary at the turbolift taking its time in answering its call. Or perhaps it wasn't taking its time. Perhaps she hadn't called it. Perhaps she had, letting it pass when it arrived so that she could wait for him to tell him just how low he was.

"Or perhaps not," Bashir said to himself when Dax turned smartly on her heel to head off down the Promenade in search of a new, better, and more cooperative turbolift to ride rather than lower herself to riding with him. He followed without hesitation. Silently, busily typing out and comparing various analogies on his tricorder as he strode briskly along beside her with only an occasional check on the status of her static, stoic expression ignoring him and staring straight ahead. They passed a second available turbolift and were about to pass the third when she abruptly changed her mind, succumbing to calling the lift which arrived immediately and empty. Its doors flung wide, its interior beckoning.

Dax paused, preferring for there to have been at least one or two other people aboard with which to ride other than him. Or at least a few other people around who were interested in joining on as passengers. She looked around; there weren't. They entered alone. The doors swished closed and they stood there. Bashir smiled to himself. She had forgotten where they were going. All that fussing about Cardassia, tricorders and medical logs she didn't have a clue where they were to meet Benjamin; unable to recall a word he had said. Something which was probably all right because Captain Sisko was apparently as preoccupied over something what with having called for the two of them, and when Bashir responded as opposed to Dax who didn't respond at all, Sisko failed to call her again.

"Amphitheater," Bashir offered without looking up from his study. She glared at him; the lift engaged. She glared at him again when he abruptly turned the tricorder on her to scan her but he was quick to show and explain why. "That's what you look like when you're angry."

She stared at the tricorder with its graphic of many colors, whirling circles and diametric lines. "Quite. That's you," Bashir nodded, pointing out the streaming parade of equations running across the bottom. "That's all the chemical and neuro-physical changes taking place."

She stared at him. The turbolift halted, the doors opened and she stalked out to head down the corridor, round the corner and storm on for the amphitheater. Bashir shrugged. Following her out and keeping pace beside her as he scanned her with the tricorder again. And again. They got to the corner before she whirled on him ready to kill, maim, rip the tricorder from his hand and fling it through one of the windows into the eternal vacuum of space. Bashir stepped back with a laugh before she did any of the above intentionally or otherwise. "I'm serious. That's you. Here, I'll show you." His offer included clearing the display and turning the tricorder on himself. Momentarily startled and changing his mind about sharing the result when he read the analysis. "Yes, well, perhaps you don't want to know at that…"

She gaped at him filling in the blanks with what she believed he meant. He certainly never said anything even remotely off color, only laughing again. "What?"

"Oh!" she turned away from him again.

"No, wait," he protested.

She attacked him. Spinning him face-forward up against the wall, pinning him as she snatched the tricorder to hurl it down the corridor. It screamed past Odo, striking the doors of the amphitheater and bouncing off to skitter its way across the floor.

"Julian!" was all she said in desperate warning, whipping him around to face her. Still holding him pinned flat against the wall, her hands gripping his wrists tightly. Her markings vivid black as she took a breath, the muscles of her upper arms straining against her uniform. Bashir held his breath that her breath would calm her, steadfast in not averting his eyes from hers burning into his. He wasn't angry, or frightened. Extremely concerned for her is what he believed he felt, feeling the power of her strength pressing, crushing against him. He couldn't have moved if he wanted to, not without having to strike at her. She broke eye contact first. He could feel the change, the tension in her hands starting to relax. Bashir was relived one moment, startled again the next along with her when the door to the turbolift suddenly opened and Kira disembarked with Worf.

"Yes, well, now you know I'm innocent, if only because you're innocent as well," he agreed as the four of them stared at each other in a scene that was reminiscent of the one in his office with only the position of the two players reversed. Dax pressing him up against a wall, rather than him pressing her.

"Julian…" Dax sighed as Kira decided she didn't want to know, rousting herself from gawking at the two of them to stalk off for the amphitheater.

"Quite," Bashir nodded, taking advantage of the opportunity to excuse himself out from under her to retrieve his tricorder quite possibly dead on its arrival down the other end of the corridor.

"Yes, well, it's seen worse," he reassured Odo watching him clip the tricorder's rugged and durable hinged sections back together.

"Yes, well, why has it?" Odo wondered.

"What?" Bashir said. "Oh. Figure of speech really. Just something everyone says when they do something to something…that they really shouldn't…" he gave the tricorder an encouraging whack in its sensor assembly. "And it nevertheless ends up working as well as it ever did." 

Dax felt Julian pull away from her, letting him go without an argument, and briefly studying the ceiling above her head before she smiled confidentially to Worf. "You really don't want to know."

His grunt confirmed she was right, as he was certain it had everything to do with Bashir rather than her. They walked to the amphitheater together, Julian glancing up out from under his brow once.

The short time spent with Sisko waiting for his science officer and physician was uncomfortable, silent and long. Too much longer and second thoughts and suspicions would have overshadowed Anar's trust in the Prophets that the point to involving the Federation was to reveal a Guardian hidden somewhere among their ranks. Their plan beyond the mortal one of fulfilling Janice's dream of securing the assistance of a botanist and legitimacy for the tiny colony.

It wasn't the Federation who walked in through the door though, it was Kira Nerys.

"By the Prophets…" Anar whispered, though the choice of Guardian made sense. The surrogate mother to Dukat's Bajoran indiscretion. He, the surrogate father to the Human wife of the Prefect's eldest heir; sister to his brothers, and so on down the line.

Anar was convinced without Ziyal's endorsement even though Kira didn't appear initially to share in either his revelation or appreciation. She stopped with the sight of a Special Forces office standing with Sisko on the floor of the amphitheater. Though only one of them sported the dried, crusted colors of blood, none appearing Human even under the muted light, the profile of the office turning to face her was Bajoran, as clearly was he someone else when he did face her. Kira stiffened with the combative attitude of a hawk, sweeping down the aisle to strike at the effrontery to Shakaar. 

"Shakaar has no living relatives," she denied Anar, informing Sisko.

An exaggerated claim, undeniably false. Anar chuckled. "To the contrary, Nerys, by my small numbers alone, I count three cousins aged four months to thirty-four years…as well as an uncle, yes," he inclined his head when she turned on him from Sisko. "Two of them, unfortunately. I am Anar. Preferred for simplicity's sake to Shakaar Adon the elder. But then we are notoriously far less formal in the outer colonies -- "

"Don't!" she raised her hand to stop him and his lies; he caught it clasping it to lobe of his ear. Something she read in his pagh made her pause. Something he couldn't read in hers made him frown. In any event it was not the meeting of two like souls that he had imagined moments ago. Those were the doctor's words approaching a few comfortable, cocky steps behind the Trill with her amused expression and the Klingon flustered in his perplexed annoyance.

__

All right, so I was wrong. Anar thought to himself of Guardians and then he thought of Federation clowns rather than Cardassian ones. The Trill was turning her bemused observation of him to Sisko.

"Well, it explains…"

"Yes, Commander," he interrupted quietly. "It explains General Martok's bridge."

"Element of surprise," she unnecessarily clarified for her husband.

"That necessary edge," the Doctor Bashir quipped in irritating addendum, accepting the little jar of purple cream from Sisko for evaluation.

"I disagree," Worf growled far preferring to uphold his belief in the power of being Klingon and a needed squad of Cardassians to better them rather than this one lone Bajoran regardless of whose face he wore.

"Yes, well…" Chances were Bashir would far prefer to have his tricorder be working; which it wasn't. A good guess as to why. He attempted to catch Dax's eye for her opinion as to the mysterious cause behind the single, rather anemic looking blip attempting to struggle its way across the display screen? "Unfortunately, we can't always get what we want…" She attempted to ignore him leaving him little choice but to sidled his way up to her to share with her the tricorder's findings, or lack thereof. "Yes? No? You see something I don't?"

"Interesting," she admitted.

"Doctor?" Sisko was interested as well.

"Well, actually I think Dax is likely more qualified than I am to comment…" 

"No, that's all right," she nodded.

"Well, I'll admit it has some interesting properties…" Bashir said.

"If not some interesting characteristics," she agreed.

"Color?" he looked at her.

She hesitated briefly. "Consistency?"

"Texture," Bashir started to laugh, quick to forestall Kira's impatient reach for the tricorder. "No, that's all right. Actually, Dax and I really would rather not comment until we have had time to conduct an actual analysis…that's not to say you can't tell us what this is supposed to be? At least it's point? Purpose?"

"Some form of botanical tissue rejuvenator, is my understanding, Doctor," Sisko replied.

"Regeneration," Anar corrected that understanding with a reach for the jar that Bashir willingly returned to him. "Not to be ridiculed, or confused with an age reduction cream."

Bashir smiled pleasantly. "If it's capable of tissue regeneration, it would likewise be capable of rejuvenation -- at least on a temporary basis. That's not to say we haven't a data bank full of such prescriptive compounds, because, of course, we have. All with their own documented percentages of success and/or failure. In any event none will ever surpass any body's own ability -- "

"Depends on the state of that body, Doctor," Anar proposed harshly. "The planet you come from -- "

"And the availability of modern technology to induce and maintain regeneration," Bashir neatly concluded for him. "Point taken. So I'll tell you what, I'll point you in the direction of the morgue, per chance you don't know already know the way, and when you've managed to regenerate one of those bodies to the point that it once again lives -- "

"An idea, Doctor," Sisko nodded.

"I beg your pardon?" Bashir blinked.

"Perhaps not the morgue," he turned to Worf. "The Defiant, Commander -- "

"Commander Dax and I await your orders," Worf assured.

"Yes," Sisko believed he was in the process of giving them. "To the Cardassian boarder only. From there I'm sure Mister Anar and his son won't mind providing you with direction -- "

"Out of the question," Anar said.

"It has cloaking ability," the Trill offered in her smiling seduction, implying that might be of some significance or value to him.

"He's a Klingon," Anar damned Worf. "I don't care whose uniform he wears. You may not object to sitting down with those who dine on the hearts of their enemies, but I do."

Worf huffed. "I have never -- "

"Worf," Dax stopped him.

"Quite," Bashir said. "Because, no, it isn't propaganda. Klingons do dine on the hearts of their enemies. No less than an ancient and honored tradition."

"And irrelevant," Worf insisted as Dax looked at Bashir; as right she should. As right she did more than sit down with this one, not merely join with him on some rampaging blood-soaked path under the guise of helping old friends desperately seeking revenge on some Klingon outlaw colorfully dubbed the colorless or the Albino. One or the other reality made Bashir nauseated to even think about it; he was sure it was both.

Worf was busy continuing to flex his Klingon brawn for the Bajoran who couldn't care less. "You have heard the Captain's orders. You who call yourself -- "

"Shakaar Adon, to you predator," Anar assured. "Set one foot on my world and I'll wear your flailed and dried flesh for a robe." 

"That's enough," Kira's hand scratched its way to holding his arm and him at bay, apparently believing he was sincere. "No one has to set foot anywhere."

"Then you'll just have to act as escort, Nerys," he countered in cocky humor. "Or surrender one of your runabouts to my son and I; I'd rather the runabout. No offense. We are earthbound, and that is a convenience we can use long after you are gone."

"No doubt either or having to be necessary due to the classic the ionosphere of my world is not stable enough to allow transport," Bashir muttered to Dax.

"If not short for if you don't surrender a runabout we will have no alternative but to take one by force," she muttered back.

"Quite," he smiled, pleased to see she had forgiven him for whatever transgression she perceived him guilty of earlier.

"No, I haven't forgiven you," she shook her head.

"I see," he said. "Nevertheless I am obligated to forgive you for rupturing my processing block?"

"How do you know it's not the peripheral sensors?" she took the tricorder.

"Well, I highly doubt if I would even have a blip if it were the peripheral sensors, would I? It knows it's a tricorder. It's just not quite sure what I'm trying to do with it."

"Or where you're pointing it," she aimed it at him. "It's the peripheral sensors. Either that or you're remarkably limp."

He hesitated. "Limp?"

"Limp," she indicated the display screen having the devil of a time attempting to spark itself back to life.

"As in weak," Bashir nodded. "Now you see what I'm saying. If it can't associate me who must fire off how many thousand electrons every time I so much as flick an eye lash, how do you expect it to be able to decipher something as lifeless as a jar of cold cream?"

Oh, yes, she could see what he was saying, and about the only thing she could add or say to that was a sympathetic pat on his back and equally sympathetic, "I'm sure it's only temporary."

"If you are earthbound…" Worf was huffing, not seeing wings on the Bajoran's shoulders or feet. "How do you come to be on this station?"

Anar almost told him, and would have if he wasn't confident he'd know soon enough for himself. "Where there's a will, there's a way," he offered instead, above Sisko's demand for the senseless and inflammatory debate to cease even though he probably wanted to know the answer as well.

"Terran," the tireless Bashir preempted the Trill in identifying the exact origin of the idiom for the rippling brow of the Klingon.

If not thoroughly applicable to the occasion. The droning voice of the Changeling Constable interjected itself over Sisko's com badge. "Excuse me, but I have a response to Major Kira's priority transmission to Bajor…"

"What?" Kira barely managed to finish saying before Anar was on top of the console activating the monitor screen; it was Shakaar.

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

In ten years Shakaar had seen his uncle's face perhaps twice. Hearing of him infrequently, thinking of him often; every time there was a problem or trouble. In four months he had seen and heard from him more than he cared to count. Long before Captain Sisko completed the illustration of a Bajoran intruder he could not begin to describe other than by his startling shock of white hair, Shakaar knew who the intruder was.

"As I knew one or the other would get your attention," Anar was speaking sourly, coldly as he sat down. "I wouldn't," he warned when Shakaar recovered from his unpleasant surprise to reach to sever the transmission. By that time Kira was at his side and Shakaar was staring again at her staring back at him.

"You knew…" she said.

"Kira…" he started to shake his head.

"You knew!" she screamed. "Everything! You knew everything!"

Shakaar sighed. "Yes, I knew -- perhaps some things, yes," his voice rose in defense. "But whatever Adon has told you…"

"I don't care what he's told me. I want you to tell me -- she's his wife for the Prophets' sake!"

"No, she isn't his wife," Shakaar denied, disgusted and less interested in Doctor Janice Lange than he was in Gul Anon Dukat.

"She's his wife," Anar corrected, and Shakaar glared at him.

"All right she's his wife. I still cannot…" he addressed Kira, "jeopardize the many…"

"How many?" Sisko burned to ask that question, and asking and demanding an answer he was. "How many, First Minster?" He stood waiting at Anar's side.

"Over the few," Shakaar finished anyway. "Millions, Captain. Hundreds of them. All lost, you know as well as I, if we bend -- "

'To the Hawks!" Sisko had the jar of purple cream slamming it down on the console. "The Jin'Mirs, the Dak'jars! If there are others, you'll have to forgive me, but their names escape me alongside the names and numbers of the innocent."

Shakaar looked away before he looked back. "I wouldn't call Dukat an innocent."

"No more than I would call you," Sisko assured. "I believe the bargain on the table was, and is for that of a botanist."

"A botanist…" Shakaar reacted with an echo.

"A botanist," Sisko said. "And I wouldn't, if I were you, even consider saying no."

Shakaar glanced at the jar, remembering it only because of its bizarre color. "If you wish to indulge yourself in whimsies, Captain…"

"I wish to indulge myself in sense," Sisko said. "In science, for a change. If only for a moment. If only if it turns out to be someone's damn pipe dream!"

Shakaar nodded. "I can't see where I can stop you. Find something you feel warrants further investigation or study and I'll see what I can do to help you -- "

"You'll do what you can to help," Sisko corrected. "You'll do. I'll be in touch!" He severed the transmission to turn on his officers. "The Defiant, Major. If you and Mister Worf determine the ionosphere of the planet to be unstable -- "

"It has nothing to do with ionosphere," Anar interrupted. "Janice was never comfortable with the potential for contamination of the area from transporter activity."

Worf groaned. "There is a far greater risk of contamination from a runabout -- "

"Then I'll show you how to align your engines correctly!" Anar snapped. "If I agree to transport ten kilometers from my village, you'll ask me why it cannot be nine. If I agree to your runabout setting down on my world at that same ten kilometer mark, you'll have no choice but to walk."

"Provided he disengages the runabout's transporter," Bashir mentioned to Dax.

"I think he probably has that part covered."

"Yes…" Bashir said, thinking about something else actually. "I'm sure he does…What did you mean exactly when you said the performance difficulty with my peripheral sensors was likely only temporary? Well?" he said as she looked at him.

"Excuse me," she begged to borrow the jar of miracle cream away from Benjamin and offer it to him. "Rub a little on them and see what happens."

Bashir's laugh was evil. "I wouldn't tempt me."

Dax nodded. "For some reason I doubt if I'd have to."

"Quite," he indicated the jar. "I could also say…"

She was looking directly in his eyes. "But you won't."

His return smile was misleadingly legitimate. "No, I won't."

"Thank you." 

"Anytime," he handed her the tricorder to hold while he popped the seal of the jar to smear a healthy portion of its thick, sticky residual across the edge of the sensors.

Dax blinked. "What are you doing?"

"Conducting an experiment."

"An experiment?" she said.

"In getting even," he grinned. Because while she could plainly see for herself how even direct contact failed to inspire little more than that annoying little blip across the display screen, she was managing at that very moment to secure Captain Sisko's rather curious attention away from Anar.

"Julian, you're insane," Dax stared at Benjamin's curiosity beginning to slip into a look of astonishment for her.

"Perhaps," Bashir's hand clapped down on her shoulder with a shrug. "Who you are however is the person who's going to have to explain why they're smearing purple gunk all over the equipment."

"I…" Dax said to Sisko. "Well, actually, Julian…"

"Oh, right," Bashir scoffed. "Nice try. But I believe you'll find it's more like Julian told you not to do that, now, didn't I?"

"No," Dax shook her head at Sisko. "No, Julian did not tell me not to do it." Benjamin's eyes brightened as hers closed with a sigh. "No, actually, what I meant to say…"

"Actually, what she meant to say," Bashir thought he would laugh until he cried, "is apparently I should have."

"Yes…" Sisko returned to listening to Anar's biting dictation with a shake of his head. 

"And that invitation, Sisko," Anar assured, "does not include your Klingon, nor permission to conduct scans or probes of my world from orbit. There's nothing there of any further interest to you. A string of abandoned Cardassian mines. A smaller, southern continent generally uninhabitable since long before the occupation…" his attention was momentarily distracted by the ribald laughter of Bashir. "Other than that, the skeletal remains of Anon's transport, per chance you haven't already guessed…"

Sisko had guessed. His hand up to stop Anar before he tired himself out as much as he was tiring him. 

"And a rather interesting graveyard of Maquis ghosts and their props, the Dominion's Jem'Hadar, and, of course, Klingons," Anar completed his recital despite the raised hand. "Their bones as white and deteriorating as the scrap of their once proud cruisers."

"I do not anticipate Doctor Bashir or Commander Dax requiring more than a week to collect whatever necessary samples to complete their survey…" Sisko spoke now that the elder was through.

"What?" Bashir righted himself from his laughter.

"Time to pack your attaché," Dax agreed, if she was interpreting what Benjamin was saying correctly.

"Quite," Bashir said. "Yours apparently also."

"With Major Kira in assistance and attendance at all times," Sisko promised Anar.

"I have no objections to Kira," Anar assured, as confident in his ability to acquire her understanding and trust, as he was confident in her ability to fight. "Bajoran first, as I am; as I define Bajoran, not you."

Sisko's jaw clenched, but he kept to the subject. "What I am not predisposed to do…"

"Is order the Defiant to return to secure them rather than leave it in orbit," Anar said it for him. "But you will. Cloak or no cloak, Captain, the Klingons have only to snag the Defiant in one of your own gravitic sensor nets deployed along the Cardassian border. If that doesn't convince you, Captain," he smiled, "there's always Ch'Pok. As interested in my identity, the location of my home world, as you were. With only that same difficulty as you had of somehow incorporating Dukat and Maquis together in the same sentence."

"I disagree," Worf spoke up.

"With what?" Bashir insisted. "The Klingon vessels in the area have been ordered to stand down to allow the Tir passage to the border. Once they're across the border, the sector's fair game again."

"You are presuming Doctor Lange's home world to be in this sector," Worf argued.

"Three days at warp 8," Anar answered Sisko's silent query. "No, it isn't in this sector; hardly."

"No, it's the last damn Bajoran outpost in the bloody region," Bashir fumed. "Warp 8?"

"How did you come to be on this station?" Dax nodded.

"A better question might be, Commander," Anar countered, "how did Ch'Pok manage the same in only a matter of hours?"

"They're both actually pretty good questions," Dax confided to Kira.

"Quite," Bashir said. "One with a distinct Cardassian connection and the other with a distinct Bajoran -- "

"You don't know that!" Kira snapped.

"Lending credence to Dukat's rather outlandish claim of some sort of political ménge à trois going on between Gowron, Winn and Shakaar -- no, I don't know it," Bashir turned on Kira. "Viable, that's all. Rather the same that it's viable that's what Shakaar meant when he said he couldn't jeopardize the many for the few…Rather the same," he said to Sisko, "under those circumstances and probably several others it's likely risky enough even taking the Defiant. Ch'Pok knows we'll be escorting the Tir to the Cardassian border. What happens when it's not returned after six days? What happens," he asked, "when it's not returned after two weeks? I'll tell you what happens -- "

"They'll go looking," Dax offered.

"Quite," Bashir said firmly. "Likely long before six days. In the meantime, in six days if the Defiant has returned there's a decent chance the Klingons will presume who we also acted as escort for is this Bajoran Anar; so what? Who cares? Someone has to escort him home. It's not likely you'd allow him to find his way alone, nor leave it to Dukat. If however after two weeks and the Defiant still hasn't returned -- "

"They'll continue looking," Dax offered.

"Quite," Bashir said firmly. "With that much better chance of finding us. And if it's all right with you I'd rather not find myself cast aside in some eclectic graveyard along with the rest of the relics."

"That's a reasonably strong argument," Dax congratulated him.

"Thank you," Bashir accepted, though scarcely remembering half of what he just said. Or for that matter where he even started out other than with not wanting to spend a week with Worf anywhere, least of all on some scrap yard of a Bajoran colony.

"You are presuming there would even be cause for a Klingon attack," Worf envisioned himself a telepath apparently. Reading Bashir's mind and hence no one's fool. Not when it came to Bashir; to Klingons, apparently, yes.

"Yes, well, aside from I wasn't aware of there needing to be cause for a Klingon attack -- of course I'm presuming that!" Bashir insisted. "He annihilated Martok's bridge crew. Damned if I know, or care why for that matter -- "

"A platter of 1800 hearts and souls," Anar replied.

"Good God." True, or false, Bashir walked away, not really wanting to think about it either way.

"Bashir has a point," Kira reiterated Dax's point to Sisko eyeing Anar.

"As have I this innate aversion to public appearances," Anar reminded him dryly of that other alternative. "I've had it all my life."

That, Sisko believed.

"And, of course, there's always that other possibility," Anar said.

That he was telling the truth; at least how he saw it to be.

"We'll be fine," Kira was nodding. "We've been fine before."

And no reason to begin thinking otherwise now. Sisko turned to Worf. "All points considered, Mister Worf, the Defiant is to return to the station until it is time to secure the runabout -- at a rendezvous that is be somewhere other than the colony, Major," he advised Kira. "I'll leave you'll to arrange where with Mister Worf."

"Understood," she said.

"And appreciated," Anar agreed. "Anon is anxious to get underway."

Sisko saw no signs of any communication device on the Bajoran, nor heard the faintest whisper relaying that information. "A presumption or fact?" he said coldly.

A fact. The transporter carrier wave was unexpected. Sisko's quick step forward to pull Kira clear worthless and potentially dangerous; Dax grabbed him. Kira vanishing with Anar, his farewell light and amused. "We'll meet you on the Defiant…"

"He won't get far," Worf promised should the Bajoran have any ideas on his mind other than compliance.

"No," Sisko said, though certain the Bajoran had several ideas in mind at all times.

"Quite," Bashir said. "And rather a boastful claim that he won't do anything when he's done what he damn well pleases since the beginning."

"I wouldn't…" Dax's shaking head cautioned him from invoking painful reminders better left unsaid.

"Too late," Bashir grinned. "I already have."

She noticed. "Ten minutes?" she asked as they walked up the aisle, out the door, past Odo loitering in the hall, for the turbolift.

"Meet in the lab?" Bashir clarified. "Yes, I suppose ten minutes is possible… Sounds like you're not packing too much more than an attaché."

"It's a week, Julian," she reminded.

"Not a month, and hardly Bajor Prime. Still, it's really two weeks if you count the travel time -- " The door to the turbolift closed, Odo unable to overhear anything beyond that point, and it was unsatisfying.

"Constable," Sisko was behind him beside Mister Worf looking somewhat tiredly at the turbolift.

"There'll be another one along in a moment or two; there always has been," Odo grunted, more interested in who wasn't in the corridor, rather than who was, or, for that matter, in who just left. "Where's Major Kira?"

"Aboard the Tir." Sisko attempted to pass off as sure enough the turbolift arrived to take Worf out of there huffing and puffing about being aboard the Defiant, though, as far as Odo knew, he liked being aboard the Defiant. Spent half his time aboard the Defiant now that he was married to Commander Dax, rather than all of his time which he spent before he took those wedding vows. So why the huffing and puffing like his life was over? Who knew. Probably something to do with Bashir. Probably more to do with being Klingon. A race who always responded as if their lives were over, no matter what the subject.

"Yes, well, I imagine you'll tell me why Major Kira is aboard the Tir," Odo replied. "If not reassure me it's with your permission she's aboard the Tir."

"Major Kira will be aboard the Defiant shortly," Sisko agreed, turning to catch the next turbolift happening by.

"A touch vague," Odo mentioned. "But that's all right, I'm sure you'll tell me why vague also."

"Perhaps later, Constable, yes," Sisko stepped to accept the arriving lift's offer of a ride.

"When later?" Odo decided to join him, not to be pushy.

"I'm not sure," Sisko admitted. "A matter of mandatory discretion, if you will."

"I'm discrete," Odo believed. "Not quite sure what's left to be discrete about -- "

Sisko shook his head. "Gul Dukat has been aboard the Tir since departing the amphitheater."

"With his wife. You keep saying that. Rather the same as I keep saying something about the choices being limited as far as who was in that amphitheater."

"Shakaar Adon," Sisko finally acknowledged.

"That wasn't one of them," Odo was forced to agree.

"The elder, Constable. The Hawk. Anar. I imagine there's been a few others."

"Definitely not one of them. Halt program," Odo requested of the computer; it complied. He ogled Sisko.

"There's no reason why you should have known."

"Thank you, but you're wrong. When you've been around as long as I have there's no excuse." 

Sisko thought about that. "As much sense as it makes on one hand -- "

"It makes little on every other. To repeat, Hawk, or the Hawk, was a Maquis leader."

"Is, Constable. Most definitely is. Under that guideline alone elitist would be a better word to describe our Mister Anar rather than invisible."

"Something to do with that word leader. Not an unknown. Can't be unknown, and therefore has to be known, if not by many, at least a few."

"Seen, Constable," Sisko's nod of understanding was building. "The word is seen. Seen by more than a few. However, under that guideline that he is also of Shakaar it's a pretty fair gamble loyalty to him, or loyalty to First Minister Shakaar either way spells loyalty and from there safe."

"Mutually beneficial to each other," Odo snorted. "That's interesting. As would it would turn a few things upside down."

"Each in their own way," Sisko said. "Yes, it is interesting. And yes, it certainly would. I met a man, Constable who some would say was a twin."

"Not what you would say."

"No," Sisko whispered. "Elitist, definitely. Proud of it. Isolationist, perhaps? Arrogant, certainly."

"I'm listening," Odo grunted. "Simply waiting to hear which Shakaar."

Sisko's look was pained. "Now is really not the time for humor, Constable."

Odo supposed it wasn't. "There's still a bright side."

"What bright side is that?" Sisko was too tired and troubled to even try and think of one.

"Dukat's son is married to the daughter of Shakaar Adon of…" he let Sisko fill in the blank. 

"Dyaan IX," Sisko blinked and started to laugh.

"I'll make a note of it. Never heard of it, but I'll make a note of it. Resume program."

"You do that, Constable," Sisko nodded as the turbolift reengaged. Tir. "You do that."

"I will. That still doesn't explain why Major Kira's aboard the Tir."

"Whimsies, Constable, whimsies," Sisko agreed, a spring in his step when he stepped from the lift halting adjacent to the airlock that just happened to lead to the docking ring and from there the Tir.

"Whimsies. Yes, well, the Prophets know we need more of that around here," Odo grunted as the door to the turbolift closed, rather hoping the spring in the Captain's step didn't turn out to be short-lived.


End file.
